Carme Arenas (Granollers, 1954) is a translator, literary critic and teacher.

After obtaining degrees in Geography and History (1977) and then in Catalan Philology (1980) from the University of Barcelona, she completed higher studies in French, Italian and English as well as a Master's Degree in Governance and Management of Educational Centres. From 1998 to 2008, she worked as a teacher-consultant in Contemporary Catalan Literature and Avant-garde Movements at the Open University of Catalonia (OUC) where she is a member of the teaching staff. She was editor-in-chief of the publication Catalan Writing (2006 – 2011).

Her work as a translator from Italian is particularly notable. In 1986, she received the "Serra d'Or" Critics' Prize for her translation into Catalan of Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience (La consciència de Zeno). Other authors she has translated include Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Boccaccio, Giuseppe Culicchia, Machiavelli, Alberto Cavallari, Francesca Duranti and Carlo Lucarelli. She co-authored (with Núria Cabré) the study Les avantguardes a Europa i a Catalunya (Avant-garde Movements in Europe and Catalonia, 1990) and was also one of the authors of Avantguardes i Literatura a Europa i a Catalunya (Avant-garde Movements and Literature in Europe and Catalonia). In 2006 she published La literatura catalana i la traducció en un món globalitzat (Catalan Literature and Translation in a Globalised World), which she co-authored with S. Škrabec. She also edited the complete poetic and prose works of Joan Salvat-Papasseit, Poesia i prosa de Joan Salvat-Papasseit (2006).

From 1997 to 1999 she was secretary of the board of Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC, Association of Catalan Language Writers), and from 2010 to 2018 she was president of the PEN Català.



Web page: Toni Terrades for AELC.
Documentation: Carme Arenas and Toni Terrades.
Photographs: PEN Català / Author’s personal files.
Translation: Julie Wark.