Anthea Bell

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, Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the French Asterix comics 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 (née Gibson), 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.

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 , 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. Other comic books she has translated include , 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 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). 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 ) has had a positive effect on Hoffman's profile as well.

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 into English as The Parent Trap, 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. In 2020, Australian actress Ruby Rees recorded an unabridged narration of Bell's translation for Bolinda.

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 that 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 (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".

Bell died on 18 October 2018 at the age of 82.

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

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:

YearPublisherTitleAuthorTranslatorOriginal languageCitation 1976 Henry Z. Walck The Cat and Mouse Who Shared a House Ruth Hürlimann Anthea Bell German Winner 1979 Franklin Watts, Inc. Konrad Christine Nöstlinger Anthea Bell German Winner