The objective of this thesis is to analyze the English translation of A vida como ela é…, a collection of short stories written by Nelson Rodrigues and originally published as a daily column in the Última Hora newspaper between 1951 and 1961. This translation, Life As It Is, was carried out by the translator Alex Ladd and published in the United States by Host Publications in 2009. This study was informed by Itamar Even- Zohar’s polysystem theory (1990), Gideon Toury’s descriptive approach to translation (1995), the ideas of André Lefevere, particularly the concept of patronage (1992), and the proposal of categorizing translation strategies of cultural references, created by Javier Franco Aixelá (1996). The analysis of Life As It Is focused both on its function within the North American literary polysystem as well as the product itself, by applying Franco Aixelá’s categorization of culture-specific items in order to evaluate the effects of the translating choices made by Alex Ladd.