Francesc Payarols (Girona, 1896 - Barcelona, 1998) was a translator from Russian, German, English and French, and he also taught German and English at secondary schools in la Seu d'Urgell and Lleida.

Thanks to the great efforts of his humble family, he studied Education and languages. He was the first person to translate directly from Russian to Catalan for the publishing house Proa, with authors including Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekov. With other colleagues in his profession he established the publishing house Atena but this was a short-lived venture. He subsequently translated works by Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann from German to Spanish for the publishing house Apolo.

Immediately after the Civil War he worked as a secondary school German and English teacher in the Seu d'Urgell Institute, after which he had a tenured position as an English teacher in Lleida.

He combined teaching with his work for the publishing house Labor for which he translated – from English, French and Spanish – a great number of books on a wide variety of subjects ranging from mythology, history, geography, art, economics and stories by Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.



Web page: Francesc Viñas for AELC.
Documentation: Pilar Estelrich.
Photographs: Author’s family files.
Translated by Julie Wark.