In this article, we intend to present an overview of translation in Brazil from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, highlighting its role in the formation of the Brazilian identity. There is a big gap in Brazil about the history of translation, few are, in fact, the research for the reconstitution of the role of translators and translation in the constitution of the country and particularly there is little on the monastic translation since the arrival of the Jesuits to the end of the Empire of Brazil in 1889. The article traced the lines of the project "Estudio comparado de la labor filológica, traductora y científica de las órdenes religiosas monásticas en la construcción de la identidad americana: el caso de Colombia y Brasil" developed on the basis of existing manuscripts in the Benedictine monastery of Bahia (Sao Bento), which houses the largest collection of manuscripts from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries , to review the literature on the subject and history of Brazil with reference to fundamental research Lia Wyler and finally present the biographies of monks and translators inserting this story in the wider context of monastic translation in South America.