This article analyses the influence of Laurent de Premierfait as a major figure of translation at the end of the Middle Ages. He devoted his life to translating Cicero, Boccaccio (he wrote the first French version of the Decameron) and Aristotle. In his prefaces and through the translations themselves, he exposed the prevailing attitudes of his contemporaries towards translation. Laurent de Premierfait was esteemed in his own time for popularizing classical knowledge unknown to his readers. Instruction being his primary goal, he paid much more attention to the content than to the style, and did not hesitate to alter the original to better please the readership. For the modern translation historian, Laurent de Premierfait has left many insights into the role that translation played in the late Middle Ages.