J.A. Sandfort was one of the most prominent Dutch translators of the twentieth century. In the beginning of the 1930s, he established his reputation by translating Gargantua et Pantagruel by François Rabelais (1483/1494–1553) and the controversial novel Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961). Although Sandfort also translated texts that were originally written in English, he was mostly known for his translations of French literature. Between 1928 and 1958, he translated 44 works, which were published by 17 different publishing houses.