As a recent graduate with a master's degree in political science, Paulsen joined Gyldendal Norwegian publishing house's large encyclopedia editorial team in 1957, and in 1971 became the editor-in-chief. He moved on to other roles, including personnel manager, until he retired in 1995. Four years earlier, in 1991, he was asked by the then editor of translated fiction, Gordon Hølmebakk, if he would consider translating Joseph und seine Brüder by Thomas Mann from German.

Per Paulsen's translation work mainly comprises classic German works written in the first half of the twentieth century, all published by Gyldendal Norwegian publishing house. He made his debut as a translator with Thomas Mann's four novels about Joseph and his brothers, first published in the original language between 1933 and 1943. The Norwegian translation in four volumes was published between 1993 and 1995. This was followed in 1998 by Jeg skal vitne til siste stund. Diaries from Hitler's Germany 1933-1945 by the Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer. Paulsen then translated two literary classics: The Theory of the Novel by Georg Lukács (orig. 1920) in 2001 and Erich Auerbach's Mimesis:The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (orig. 1946) the following year. Like Klemperer, Auerbach was a Jewish philologist specializing in Latin languages, but unlike Klemperer, Auerbach left Germany in the run-up to the Second World War. He wrote Mimesis in exile in Istanbul. Paulsen then translated Uwe Timm's For example My Brother (2005), which had been published in German two years earlier. Timm's novel is about the author's older brother, who enlisted in the Waffen SS. This was Paulsen's only translation of contemporary German literature. In the same year, Gyldendal published Paulsen's last translation, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family. Thomas Mann's novel had been translated into Norwegian once before by Margrethe Kjær under the title Huset Buddenbrook in 1929-30 and published in several later editions.

Knut Hoem