Obituary

Anthea Bell: Witty translator of Asterix and many weightier works

28 October 2018 - 00:00 By The Daily Telegraph

Anthea Bell, who has died at the age of 82, was sometimes described as the doyenne of translators, having introduced the English-speaking world to hundreds of book titles for adults and children, originally German and French in the main.
Her career included collaborating with WG Sebald on two books, including his acclaimed final novel, Austerlitz, rehabilitating the Austrian novelist and memoirist Stefan Zweig, and translating Kafka and Freud.
She was best known, however, as the translator, in collaboration with Derek Hockridge, of 35 titles in the Asterix the Gaul saga. Admirers thought that she and her creative partner often surpassed the wit of the French original.
Obelix's small, bad-tempered dog Idéfix (from idée fixe- French for dogma), became Dogmatix; the oldest inhabitant of Asterix's village, Agecanonix, became Geriatrix, and Panoramix, the potion-dispensing druid, was rendered as Getafix. ("Nothing to do with drugs," Bell claimed, unconvincingly. "He was getting a fix on the stars.")
Even more ingenious was her approach to the jokes and cultural riffs that litter the original, ranging from simple gags that might appeal to an eight-year-old ("The galley slaves are revolting," a Roman admiral tells Caesar. "And so are you," Caesar replies) to more sophisticated wordplay, much of it requiring a smattering of Latin.
The English translations of the Asterix comic books were instrumental in elevating them to international bestsellers, with hundreds of millions of copies sold worldwide.
They also made Bell into a celebrity - a rarity in translating circles. However, she never sought fame and Asterix was only a small fraction of her work.
She believed that translations should "read as if they were not only written but also thought in English".
She was appointed OBE in 2010 and awarded Germany's Verdienstkreuz (Cross of Merit) in 2015. Her two sons survive her. 1936-2018..

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