Anthea Bell 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,[2] Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald,[3] the Inkworld trilogy by Cornelia Funke and the French Asterix comics with co-translator Derek Hockridge.

[5] 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.

[1] Over the decades, Bell translated numerous Franco-Belgian comics of the bande dessinée genre into English, including Asterix – for which her new puns were praised for keeping the original French spirit intact.

[12] In 2014, Bell faithfully retranslated Erich Kästner's 1949 German children's novel Das doppelte Lottchen into English as The Parent Trap,[13] after Disney's popular film adaptation of the book.

[16] 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".

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: