The present article intends to study Brazilian poet Mario Quintana’s translations of Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen and Marcel Proust’s In the shadow of young girls in flower (French: À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur, Portuguese: À sombra das raparigas em flor). Based on Antoine Berman’s analysis of the stages of the translation process and Anthony Pym’s approach to the “translator of flesh and bone”, this article seeks the translator’s voice without consultation of the source-texts, working on the premise that the translated text is capable of speaking for itself. Finally, taking into consideration the close relation between Quintana’s translation work and Globo Publishing House of Porto Alegre, some features of the history of translation in Brazil are explained.