Joseph Charles Mardrus, otherwise known as "Jean-Charles Mardrus" (1868–1949), born in Cairo, was a French physician and a noted translator. Today he is best known for his translation of the Thousand and One Nights from Arabic into French, which was published from 1898 to 1904, and was in turn rendered into English by Powys Mathers.
Mardrus's version of the Arabian Nights is racy, elegant, and highly readable. It is mentioned explicitly in the pages of A Remembrance of Things Past Unfortunately, Mardrus inserted a lot of imaginative material of his own, and his translation is therefore not wholly authentic, even though it is very well written and developed.
As a doctor for the French government, he worked throughout to Morocco and the Far East. He produced other translations, some illustrated by the Swiss engraver François-Louis Schmied (1873–1941).
He married the novelist and poet Lucie Delarue in 1900. They divorced around 1915.