| Anthea Bell | |
| Birth Date: | 10 May 1936 |
| Birth Place: | Suffolk, England |
| Death Place: | Cambridge, England |
| Nationality: | British |
| Education: | Somerville College, University of Oxford |
| Occupation: | Translator |
| Years Active: | 1960–2015 |
| Known For: | Asterix stories translation |
| Children: | 2; including Oliver |
| Father: | Adrian Bell |
| Relatives: | Martin Bell (brother)[1] |
Anthea Bell (10 May 1936 – 18 October 2018) was an English translator of literary works, including children's literature, from French, German and Danish. These include The Castle by Franz Kafka,[2] Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald,[3] the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the French Asterix comics with co-translator Derek Hockridge.[4]
Bell was born in Suffolk on 10 May 1936.[5] According to her own accounts, she picked up lateral thinking abilities essential in a translator from her father Adrian Bell, Suffolk author and the first Times cryptic crossword setter. Her mother, Marjorie Bell (née Gibson), was a home maker.[6] The couple's son, Bell's brother, Martin, is a former BBC correspondent who was an independent Member of Parliament for one parliamentary term.[7]
After attending a boarding school in Bournemouth, she read English at Somerville College, Oxford. She was married to the publisher and writer Antony Kamm from 1957 to 1973; the couple had two sons, Richard and Oliver. Oliver Kamm is a leader writer for The Times. After her sons left home, she lived and worked in Cambridge. She died on 18 October 2018, aged 82.[8]
Anthea Bell's career as a translator began at the end of the 1950s when the German publisher Klaus Flugge asked Antony Kamm if he knew anyone able to translate Der kleine Wassermann, a book for children by Otfried Preussler. Kamm recommended his wife; Bell's English version entitled The Little Water Sprite was published in 1960. Eventually, she translated Preussler's entire works.
Over the decades, Bell translated numerous Franco-Belgian comics of the bande dessinée genre into English, including Asterix – for which her new puns were praised for keeping the original French spirit intact. Peter Hunt, now Professor Emeritus in Children's Literature at Cardiff University, has written of her "ingenious translations" of the French originals which "in a way display the art of the translator at its best".[9] Other comic books she has translated include Le Petit Nicolas, Lieutenant Blueberry, and Iznogoud.
She specialised in translating children's literature, and re-translated Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales from Danish for the publishing house of G.P. Putnam's Sons. She also translated the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Gier. Other works include The Princess and the Captain (2006), translated from La Princetta et le Capitaine by Anne-Laure Bondoux. Bell also translated into English many adult novels, as well as some books on art history, and musicology. She has translated W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz (plus other works by Sebald), and Władysław Szpilman's memoir The Pianist (translated, at the author's request, from the German version).[10] Her translations of works by Stefan Zweig have been said to have helped restore his reputation among anglophone readers, and that of E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (originally Lebensansichten des Katers Murr) has had a positive effect on Hoffman's profile as well. In addition, Penguin Classics published Bell's new translation of Sigmund Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in 2003. Oxford University Press published her translation of Kafka's The Castle in 2009.
She contributed an essay titled "Translation: Walking the Tightrope of Illusion" to a 2006 book, The Translator as Writer, in which she explained her preference for 'invisible' translation whereby she creates the illusion that readers are not reading a translation "but the real thing".[11]
Bell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours for her services to literature and literary translations.
In 2014, Bell faithfully retranslated Erich Kästner's 1949 German children's novel Das doppelte Lottchen into English as The Parent Trap,[12] after Disney's popular film adaptation of the book. Bell's translation was published in the United Kingdom and Australia by Pushkin Press, replacing Cyrus Brooks' 1962 English translation, which is still published in the United States and Canada as Lisa and Lottie.[13] In 2020, Australian actress Ruby Rees recorded an unabridged narration of Bell's translation for Bolinda.[14]
Bell received the German Federal Republic's Cross of Merit in 2015.[15]
In a December 2017 newspaper column, Bell's son Oliver Kamm revealed his mother had entered a nursing home due to illness a year earlier, and "her great mind has now departed".[16] As a result of her forced retirement, the 37th book in the Asterix series, Asterix and the Chariot Race (published in October 2017), was translated by Adriana Hunter. The end of the book has a message of thanks from the publishers to Bell for "her wonderful translation work on Asterix over the years".[17]
Bell died on 18 October 2018 at the age of 82.[18]
The Mildred L. Batchelder Award is unusual in that it is given to a publisher yet it explicitly references a given work, its translator and its author. Its intent is to encourage the translation of children's works into English in order "to eliminate barriers to understanding between people of different cultures, races, nations, and languages."
Anthea Bell, translating from German, French and Danish, has been mentioned for more works than any other individual or organisation (including publishers) in the history of the award:
| Year | Publisher | Title | Author | Translator | Original Language | Citation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Henry Z. Walck | The Cat and Mouse Who Shared a House | Ruth Hürlimann | Anthea Bell | German | Winner[20] | |
| 1979 | Franklin Watts, Inc | Konrad | Christine Nöstlinger | Anthea Bell | German | Winner | |
| 1990 | E.P. Dutton | Buster's World | Bjarne Reuter | Anthea Bell | Danish | Winner | |
| 1995 | E.P. Dutton | The Boys from St.Petri | Bjarne Reuter | Anthea Bell | Danish | Winner | |
| 2006 | Phaidon Press Limited | Nicholas | René Goscinny | Anthea Bell | French | Honor | |
| 2008 | Phaidon Press | Nicholas and the Gang | René Goscinny | Anthea Bell | French | Honor | |
| 2009 | Amulet Books | Tiger Moon | Antonia Michaelis | Anthea Bell | German | Honor[21] |