The aim of the research was to present a partial analysis of the psycholinguistic process of the translation of letters written by George Craig Smith, an employee of the Companhia de Terras Norte Paraná which was responsible for the colonization of that area. The psycholinguistic process under investigation illustrates the problems of translation for which the learner tries to find solutions for using strategies. The first phase of this research consisted of obtaining the process of translation by applying the think-aloud protocol. Three students, undergraduates majoring in English and Portuguese, were the subjects of this research. During the second phase, the problems of translation, in addition to the strategies applied, were identified and analyzed.