This paper discusses the relationships between the concepts of translation and adaptation by analysing their differences, crisscrossings and conflicts particularly apparent in Ana Maria Machado’s translation of Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, into Brazilian Portuguese. Her translation is also briefly compared to Sebastião Uchoa Leite’s translation and Nicolau Sevcenko’s adaptation. It is argued that the images built upon the relationships between translation and adaptation, writing and rewriting, 'faithfulness' and 'liberty', translator and adaptor, legitimacy and authority, do not embody a homogeneous unity whose boundaries are free from overflows. Such boundaries are related to discursive practices inasmuch as both translator and adaptor are not freed from the institutional space that embraces the confluence between editorial policies and the critical receptions of an author’s work in the target language culture. [Source: abstract in journal]