The article deals with the original documents on the activities of the Academy of Sciences’ translators of the 18th century, stored in the St. Petersburg Branch of the RAS Archive (SPbB ARAS. F. 3. Op. 11). The materials include translators’ reports and letters on their work as well as various related documentation on recruitment and dismissal, job assignment, wages, rewards, illness and disability periods, etc. The tasks of the Academy’s translators covered the translation of current record keeping, as well as scientific and literary works; beyond that, a large layer of work was associated with translating articles for “Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti” and “Primechaniya” periodicals. In 1743 at the Academy of Sciences there was formed a so-called “Translation Expedition”, a structure having a major task to translate and release the above-mentioned periodicals. Ivan I. (Johann Caspar) Taubert was entrusted to control the work of the “Translation Expedition”. The article examines documents on the activities of Academy’s translators Ivan Akimov, Nikolay Bukhvostov, Ivan Golubtsov, Vasily Lebedev, Karl Friedrich Moderach, Nikolay Shikhmatov, Gustav Freygang, Vasily Teplov, Ivan Staffenhagen, Alexey Polenov, Samson Volkov, Semen Bashilov, Gur Ivanov, Ivan Ungebauer, Ippolit Bogdanovich, as well as the Chinese language translators Larion Rossokhin and Alexey Leontiev. The article also mentions the translation of a contract for the sale of a card factory, made in 1775 by Ivan Staffenhagen. In 1790 there was established a “Translation Division”, aiming at translating various useful books from foreign languages into Russian. The article examines the report of 1795 on the course of the “Buffon's Natural History” translation, undertaken by the “Translation Division” members, academicians S. K. Kotelnikov, S. Ya. Rumovskiy, A. P. Protasov among others. The examined documents on the activities of the Academy of Sciences’ translators of the 18th century demonstrate a variety of translation tasks, which, depending on specialists’ competence and experience, included translations of various levels and directions: materials for periodicals, current record keeping, as well as scientific and literary books.