In 1953, after spending some time in Portugal at the University of Lisbon, he obtained an undergraduate degree in Portuguese translation as well.
In 1962, he was awarded a PhD degree from Heidelberg University for his dissertation on adjectival and verbal color terms in Indo-European languages and the issue of their translation.
In 1968 he achieved Habilitation by completing a postdoctoral thesis on the structure of Central South Asian languages, contributing to the sprachbund issue.
From 1984 to 1992, he was Chair Professor of General Translation Studies with Special Reference to Portuguese at Heidelberg University.
Vermeer is best known for establishing skopos theory, but published widely on a variety of topics in linguistics, translation and interpreting.