Anthea Bell

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Anthea Bell is a well known translator who has translated numerous literary works, especially children's literature, from French, German, Danish and Polish to English. She is however, best remembered for her witty and innovative translations of the French Asterix comics along with co-translator Dereck Hockridge.

Short Biography

Anthea Bell was born in Suffolk, United Kingdom. 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. She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. She has translated numerous Franco-Belgian comics of the bande dessinée genre into English, most notably Asterix - for which her innovative new puns have been critically acclaimed for keeping the original French spirit intact. Other notable comic books she has translated include Le Petit Nicolas, and Iznogoud. She specializes in translating children's literature, and has re-translated Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales from Danish for the publishing house of G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Anthea Bell has also translated a large number of novels, as well as some books on art history, and musicology into English. Her translations of W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz and E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Life and Opinions of the Tomcatt Murrhas have been well received critically. She presently lives and works from Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Awards

Some of the more notable awards that Anthea Bell won :

2002 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, Goethe Institute - for translating W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz
2002 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize - for translating W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz

References

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