Zofia Szleyen was born in 1904 in Łódź. She completed her chemistry studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and then worked in a chemical-analytical laboratory and hospital in Łódź. She was a member of the Trade Union of Chemists and Bacteriologists, sympathized with the communist movement and wrote articles for the press. In May 1937, she left for Spain, where her husband Mieczysław Szleyen had already arrived before her.
In Spain, she worked in the editorial office of the the Polish volunteers' press and as a translator (she knew Spanish, Russian, German and French). After being withdrawn from Spain, she was placed in a centre for women from the International Brigades in France. During the Second World War she took part in the French resistance movement.
After 1945, she returned to Poland, where she became one of the leading translators of Spanish literature and poetry and a very important figure for Iberian studies. In 1985 she became an honorary member of the Polish Association of Hispanists at the Faculty of Iberian Studies of the University of Warsaw, and in 1989 she was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit for the Arts by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. She died in October 1994 in Warsaw.
