He studied librarianship at Charles University in Prague, studied English on his own and began translating for samizdat. Shortly after the Velvet Revolution, in 1990, he translated his friend William S. Burroughs' seemingly untranslatable book Naked Lunch. He then continued with texts by Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and other authors.
As a music and literary publicist, Josef writes articles for the cultural website of the Czech TV and others, has participated in the creation of a number of TV shows, and collaborates with radio. He was the first to head the Czech newsroom of Rolling Stone magazine, and published in a number of other media. Rauvolf received the Josef Jungmann Prize in 2011 for translating Kerouac's book Visions of Cody into Czech.