Woman of the Week – Anthea Bell

Anthea Bell was an English translator of numerous literary works. She translated mostly children’s literature from French, German and Danish into English.

She translated texts by numerous authors including Frank Kafka and Sigmund Freud. Though she did her best to stay behind the scenes, her exceptional translating work earned her dozens of awards and honors.

She was born in 1936 in Suffolk, England. According to numerous interviews, she said she picked up lateral thinking abilities from her father, Adrian Bell, who was an author and the first Times (a British newspaper) cryptic crossword setter.

She studied English at Somerville College, Oxford and then shortly after graduating, got married to publisher Anthony Kamm when she was 21.

In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, she noted that she was “far too young” to get married and had to give up hope for an academic career after being pushed by her mother and in laws into becoming a secretary.

Her translation career began by accident. When her husband was approached at work to see if he knew anyone who could translate a German children’s book, he recommended his wife.

The book, Otfried Preussler’s “The Little Water Sprite,” was the first of many. She soon began getting commissions by word of mouth. She was mostly translating from German and French, but one Christmas she taught herself Danish so she could get more work.

She and Kamm divorced in her mid-30s, but she realized she could support her family on her own with a career in translating.

She first began translating French comic Asterix in 1969 and came up with some its best jokes and puns.

In her version, Obelix’s small dog Idéfix became Dogmatix, and the druid Panoramix became Getafix. Her work is described by The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation as “ingenious and superbly recreated,” displaying “the art of the translator at its best.” In many interviews, she emphasized the importance of translation being invisible and they key is making readers feel like they have “the real thing.”

Her translation career occurred parallel to the development of major technologies, particularly the internet. She was one of the early adopters of the World Wide Web. In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, she describes her first experience with the web. She only had a few lines and the poet’s name, but that was all the internet needed to find exactly the obscure reference she sought. She became an early convert of the web, but also remained aware that it would completely transform the work of a translator.

She translated hundreds of books, from comics to novels, but most of the content she translated was children’s literature. She died at age 82 in October 2018.