{{Short description|English translator (1936–2018)}} {{Lead too short|date=May 2023}} {{EngvarB|date=August 2014}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}} {{Infobox person | name = Anthea Bell | honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|size=100%|country=GBR|OBE}} | image = File:Anthea Bell gives a speech on receiving Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.jpg | alt = Anthea Bell gives a speech on receiving Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany | caption = Bell in January 2015 | birth_name = <!-- only use if different from name --> | birth_date = {{Birth date|1936|05|10|df=yes}} | birth_place = Suffolk, England | death_date = {{Death date and age|2018|10|18|1936|05|10|df=yes}} | death_place = Cambridge, England | other_names = | education = Somerville College, University of Oxford | occupation = Translator | years_active = 1960–2015 | known_for = Asterix stories translation | notable_works = | spouse = {{marriage|Antony Kamm|1957|1973|end=div.}} | children = 2; including Oliver | father = Adrian Bell | relatives = Martin Bell (brother)<ref name="Barber">{{Cite web|last=Barber|first=Tony|url=https://www.ft.com/content/ed6629e4-d853-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8|title=Anthea Bell, translator, 1936–2018|work=Financial Times|date=27 October 2018}}{{subscription required}}</ref> }} '''Anthea Bell''' {{post-nominals|post-noms=OBE}} (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,<ref name="KafkaOUP">{{Cite book|url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-castle-9780199238286?cc=gb&lang=en&|title=The Castle|series=Oxford World's Classics |editor-first1=Franz|editor-last1=Kafka|editor-first2=Anthea|editor-last2=Bell|editor-first3=Ritchie|editor-last3=Robertson|date=9 July 2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-923828-6 |accessdate=29 August 2021}}</ref> ''Austerlitz'' by W. G. Sebald,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://fivedials.com/fiction/a-translators-view/|title=A Translator's View – Anthea Bell|first=Anthea|last=Bell|date=23 July 2016|website=Five Dials}}</ref> the ''Inkworld'' trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the French ''Asterix'' comics with co-translator Derek Hockridge.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.new-books-in-german.com/the-grande-dame-of-literary-translation-anthea-bell-at-eighty/|title=The Grande Dame of Literary Translation: Anthea Bell at Eighty|first1=Ruth|last1=Martin|first2=Anthea|last2=Bell|date=13 September 2016 |website=New Books in German}}</ref>
==Biography== [[File:Anthea Bell and Oliver Kamm.jpg|thumb|Anthea Bell with her son Oliver Kamm in 2015]] Bell was born in Suffolk on 10 May 1936.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DSThAAAAMAAJ&q=Anthea+Bell+May+10,+1936|title = Award-winning Books for Children and Young Adults: An Annual Guide|last1 = Criscoe|first1 = Betty L.|year = 1990}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Marshall">{{cite news|last=Marshall|first=Alex|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/obituaries/anthea-bell-dead.html|title=Anthea Bell, Translator of Freud, Kafka and Comics, Dies at 82|work=The New York Times|date=19 October 2018}}</ref> The couple's son, Bell's brother, Martin, is a former BBC correspondent who was an independent Member of Parliament for one parliamentary term.<ref>{{cite web|last=Armistead|first=Claire|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/16/anthea-bell-asterix-translator-interview|title=Anthea Bell: It's all about finding the tone of voice in the original. You have to be quite free|work=The Guardian|date=16 November 2013}}</ref>
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.<ref name="Marshall" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Flood|first=Alison|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/18/anthea-bell-magnificent-translator-of-asterix-and-kafka-dies-aged-82|title=Anthea Bell, 'magnificent' translator of Asterix and Kafka, dies aged 82|date=18 October 2018|work=The Guardian}}</ref>
==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 {{lang|de|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 11 of Preussler's works.<ref name="Barber" />
Over the decades, Bell translated numerous Franco-Belgian comics of the {{lang|fr|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".<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=France|editor-first=Peter|title=The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation|url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordguidetolit00pete|url-access=registration|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2000|page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordguidetolit00pete/page/111 111]|isbn=978-0-19-818359-4 }}</ref> Other comic books she has translated include {{lang|fr|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 {{lang|fr|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 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).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/Archive/Making-Asterix-funny-in-English|title=Making Asterix funny in English|website=The Connexion|date=October 18, 2018}}</ref> 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 {{lang|de|Lebensansichten des Katers Murr}}) has had a positive effect on Hoffman's profile as well.<ref name="Barber" /> 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.<ref name="KafkaOUP" />
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".<ref name="BassnettBush2007">{{cite book|first1=Susan |last1=Bassnett|first2=Peter |last2=Bush|title=The Translator as Writer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lvjeBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA58|date=15 November 2007|publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-4411-2149-3|pages=58ff}}</ref>
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.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=59282 |date=31 December 2009 |page=9 |supp=y }}</ref>
In 2014, Bell faithfully retranslated Erich Kästner's 1949 German children's novel {{lang|de|Das doppelte Lottchen}} into English as ''The Parent Trap'',<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kästner|first=Erich|date=November 6, 2014|title=The Parent Trap|url=https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=tSvYBAAAQBAJ|publisher=Pushkin Press|isbn=978-1-78269-072-6 }}</ref> 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''.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2024|title=Cyrus Brooks|url=https://www.nyrb.com/collections/cyrus-brooks|publisher=New York Review Books}}</ref> In 2020, Australian actress Ruby Rees recorded an unabridged narration of Bell's translation for Bolinda.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kästner|first=Erich|date=December 1, 2020|title=The Parent Trap|url=https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/?id=AQAAAECcMwxzgM|publisher=Bolinda}}</ref>
Bell received the German Federal Republic's Cross of Merit in 2015.<ref>{{Cite press release|url=https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/news/somerville-alumna-awarded-cross-of-the-order-of-merit/|title=Somerville alumna awarded Cross of the Order of Merit|date=11 July 2016|publisher=Somerville College, Oxford}}</ref>
==Illness and death== In a December 2017 newspaper column, Bell's son Oliver Kamm revealed that his mother had entered a nursing home due to illness a year earlier, and "her great mind has now departed".<ref>{{cite news|last1=Kamm|first1=Oliver|title=Asterix is the magic potion that made me a linguist|url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/asterix-is-the-magic-potion-that-made-me-a-linguist-f982jlk5t|work=The Times|date=23 December 2017|url-access=subscription}}</ref> 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".<ref name="Ferri2017">{{cite book|author=Jean-Yves Ferri |others=Didier Conrad, artist |title=Asterix: Asterix and the Chariot Race: Album 37|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4NDWDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47|date=2 November 2017|publisher=Hachette Children's Group|isbn=978-1-5101-0402-0|pages=47ff.}}</ref>
Bell died on 18 October 2018 at the age of 82.<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Heer|first=Jeet |author-link=Jeet Heer|date=October 19, 2018|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/151781/anthea-bell-celebrated-translator-asterix-wg-sebald-dead-age-82|title=Anthea Bell, celebrated translator of Asterix and W.G. Sebald, is dead at age 82|magazine=The New Republic}}</ref>
==Notable awards== * 1987 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Hans Bemmann's ''The Stone and the Flute'' * 1996 – Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation – for Christine Nöstlinger's ''A Dog's Life'' translated from German * 2002 – Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, Goethe Institute – for W. G. Sebald's ''Austerlitz'' * 2002 – Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – for W. G. Sebald's ''Austerlitz'' * 2002 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize for W. G. Sebald's ''Austerlitz'' * 2003 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize – for Karen Duve's ''Rain'' translated from German * 2003 – Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation – for Hans Magnus Enzensberger's ''Where Were You Robert?'' translated from German * 2007 – Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation – for Kai Meyer's ''The Flowing Queen'' translated from German * 2009 – Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize – for Saša Stanišić's ''How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone'' * 2009 – Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Stefan Zweig's ''Burning Secret'' * 2017 – Eric Carle Museum Bridge Award for contributions to children's literature<ref>{{cite web|last=Burnett|first=Matia|date=October 3, 2017|title=An Evening with Heart: The 2017 Eric Carle Honors|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/74958-an-evening-with-heart-the-2017-eric-carle-honors.html|publisher=Publishers Weekly}}</ref>
===Mildred L. Batchelder Award===
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:
{|class="sortable wikitable" style="text-align: center" |- ! style="width:5%;"|Year ! style="width:20%;"|Publisher ! style="width:25%;"|Title ! style="width:15%;"|Author ! style="width:15%;"|Translator ! style="width:10%;"|Original language ! style="width:10%;"|Citation |- style="background:LemonChiffon; color:black" | <!-- Year -->1976 | <!-- Publisher -->Henry Z. Walck | <!-- Title -->'''''The Cat and Mouse Who Shared a House''''' | <!-- Author --> Ruth Hürlimann |<!-- Translator--> Anthea Bell |<!-- Language--> German |<!--Citation-->Winner<ref name=BatchelderWinners>{{cite web | title = Batchelder Award Winners | publisher = American Library Association | year = 2008 | url = http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/batchelderaward/batchelderpast/index.cfm | access-date = 17 February 2009| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090213000957/http://ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/batchelderaward/batchelderpast/index.cfm| archive-date= 13 February 2009 | url-status= live}}</ref> |- style="background:LemonChiffon; color:black" | <!-- Year -->1979 | <!-- Publisher -->Franklin Watts, Inc. | <!-- Title -->'''''Konrad''''' | <!-- Author --> Christine Nöstlinger |<!-- Translator--> Anthea Bell |<!-- Language--> German |<!--Citation-->Winner<ref name=BatchelderWinners /> |- style="background:LemonChiffon; color:black" | <!-- Year -->1990 | <!-- Publisher -->E. P. Dutton | <!-- Title -->'''''Buster's World''''' | <!-- Author -->Bjarne Reuter |<!-- Translator--> Anthea Bell |<!-- Language--> Danish |<!--Citation-->Winner<ref name=BatchelderWinners /> |- style="background:LemonChiffon; color:black" | <!-- Year -->1995 | <!-- Publisher -->E. P. Dutton | <!-- Title -->'''''The Boys from St.Petri''''' | <!-- Author -->Bjarne Reuter |<!-- Translator--> Anthea Bell |<!-- Language--> Danish |<!--Citation-->Winner<ref name=BatchelderWinners /> |- | <!-- Year -->2006 | <!-- Publisher -->Phaidon Press Limited | <!-- Title -->'''''Nicholas''''' | <!-- Author -->René Goscinny |<!-- Translator--> Anthea Bell |<!-- Language--> French |<!--Citation-->Honor<ref name=BatchelderWinners /> |- | <!-- Year -->2008 | <!-- Publisher -->Phaidon Press | <!-- Title -->'''''Nicholas and the Gang''''' | <!-- Author -->René Goscinny |<!-- Translator--> Anthea Bell |<!-- Language--> French |<!--Citation-->Honor<ref name=BatchelderWinners /> |- | <!-- Year -->2009 | <!-- Publisher -->Amulet Books | <!-- Title -->'''''Tiger Moon''''' | <!-- Author -->Antonia Michaelis |<!-- Translator--> Anthea Bell |<!-- Language--> German |<!--Citation-->Honor<ref name=Batchelder>{{cite web | title = Batchelder Award | publisher = American Library Association | year = 2008 | url = http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/batchelderaward/index.cfm | access-date = 24 February 2009| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090209180422/http://ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/batchelderaward/index.cfm| archive-date= 9 February 2009 | url-status= live}}</ref> |}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== *{{cite web|url=http://www.asterix-international.de/asterix/mirror/asterix_my_love.htm |title=Asterix, My Love |first=Anthea |last=Bell |work=Daily Telegraph |location=London |date=25 February 1999 |via=Asterix International |access-date=24 April 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100428113515/http://www.asterix-international.de/asterix/mirror/asterix_my_love.htm |archive-date=28 April 2010 }} *{{cite web|url=http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/asterix/ |title=Anthea Bell's workshop on Asterix for ''Literary Translation'', The British Council, c. 1999 |access-date=24 April 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060327011137/http://www.literarytranslation.com/workshops/asterix/ |archive-date=27 March 2006 }} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811213441/http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/gate/entertext/4_3/bell_s.pdf Opening Speech, Anthea Bell, Shelving Translation Conference, April 2004] * [http://writerunboxed.com/2006/08/18/interview-anthea-bell-part-1/ Anthea Bell interview with ''Writer Unboxed''] * [http://www.bookslut.com/small_but_perfectly_formed/2005_02_004346.php Reviews of Anthea Bell's Stefan Zweig translations at ''Bookslut''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140706004359/http://www.bookslut.com/small_but_perfectly_formed/2005_02_004346.php |date=6 July 2014 }} *Anthea Bell, [https://fivedials.com/fiction/a-translators-view/ "W.G. Sebald: A Translator's View"], ''Five Dials''
==External links== * {{LCAuth|n80004275|Anthea Bell|185|ue}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Anthea}} Category:1936 births Category:2018 deaths Category:Writers from Suffolk Category:Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford Category:English translators Category:Danish–English translators Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:French–English translators Category:German–English translators Category:British literary translators Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Translators of Sigmund Freud Category:Winners of the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation Category:National Book Critics Circle Award winners