Anthea Bell


Anthea Bell was an English translator of literary works, including children's literature, from French, German and Danish. These include The Castle by Franz Kafka Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the French Asterix comics along with co-translator Derek Hockridge.

Biography

Bell was born in Suffolk on 10 May 1936. 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, was a home maker. The couple's son, Bell's brother, Martin, is a former BBC correspondent who was an independent Member of Parliament for one parliamentary term.
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.

Works

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, she 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". 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 work includes The Princess and the Captain, 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. Her translations of W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz, Władysław Szpilman's memoir The Pianist, Her translations of works by Stefan Zweig have been said to have helped restore his reputation among anglophone readers, and E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat 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.
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".
Bell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to literature and literary translations. Bell received the German Federal Republic's Cross of Merit in 2015.

Illness and death

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". As a result of her forced retirement, the 37th book in the Asterix series, Asterix and the Chariot Race, 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".
Bell died on 18 October 2018 at the age of 82.

Notable awards

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 in the history of the award:
YearPublisherTitleAuthorTranslatorOriginal LanguageCitation
1976Henry Z. WalckThe Cat and Mouse Who Shared a HouseRuth HürlimannAnthea BellGermanWinner
1979Franklin Watts, IncKonradChristine NöstlingerAnthea BellGermanWinner
1990E.P. DuttonBuster's WorldBjarne ReuterAnthea BellDanishWinner
1995E.P. DuttonThe Boys from St.PetriBjarne ReuterAnthea BellDanishWinner
2006Phaidon Press LimitedNicholasRené GoscinnyAnthea BellFrenchHonor
2008Phaidon PressNicholas and the GangRené GoscinnyAnthea BellFrenchHonor
2009Amulet BooksTiger MoonAntonia MichaelisAnthea BellGermanHonor