Petr Dvořáček graduated from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, majoring in Czech and German Studies. He later worked as an editor and managing editor at the Academia publishing house, where he also briefly held the position of editor-in-chief in the years following the 1989 revolution. Since 1992 he has worked mainly as a translator.

His translations have focused on historiography, mainly in the field of contemporary history (Germany in the 20th century, the Protectorate, Czech-German relations) by authors including Detlef Brandes, J. W. Brügel, Niklas Frank, Brigitte Hamann, Katrin Himmler, Ferdinand Seibt, Reiner Stach, Ines Koeltzsch, Mirjam Zadoff), as well as fiction (Wolfgang Koeppen, Wolfgang Hilbig, Robert Menasse, Libuše Moníková, and Siegfried Lenz). He is currently working on a comprehensive "German-Czech Dictionary of Contemporary History Terminology". He is the recipient of two awards: the Josef Jungmann Prize and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Culture Prize.