The Prophet, Translated

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KAHLIL GIBRAN COLLECTIVE

By Glen Kalem-Habib  ·  Kahlil Gibran Collective  ·  2018  ·  kahlilgibran.com

I have come to say a word… but if death prevents my word the book of eternity will not leave a word unspoken. What I do today in my solitude will be echoed tomorrow by the multitude.
— Kahlil Gibran

Update, 4 September 2018: four further translations discovered — see The Prophet Translated: Four New Translations Found. The study has since been carried much further; the current count stands at 117 languages — see Still Speaking: The Prophet at 117 Languages.

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I

The Discovery

Not long ago I was asked to verify the official number of translations of Kahlil Gibran's crowning jewel, The Prophet. This was not the first request of its kind, but it came at a serendipitous time, when the right partner — my fellow researcher Francesco Medici — and the right tools and information were aligned in such a way as to provide both the desire and the motivation for the undertaking. What we found was no less than awe-inspiring.

For years Gibran scholars have either grappled with conducting such an in-depth study or relied on unscientific figures published by Gibran enthusiasts. As I have mentioned in previous articles, this discrepancy is likely also due to the lack of focused international research and study associated with the author himself. The earlier uncertainty surrounding his work can be traced all the way back to his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, who once said of Gibran's work: "It must be a cult, but I have never met any of its members. I haven't met five people who ever read Gibran… I never understood him." The result is that over the ninety-five years since The Prophet was published in 1923, worldwide translation numbers have never been accurately recorded. Current estimates remain at around forty to sixty² — nowhere near enough to place it on existing lists of the most translated books of all time.³

This is why a handful of researchers, myself among them, have long lobbied for reliable, fact-based studies that would finally give concrete ground to the widely recognised claim that Gibran is one of the most read poets in history. On completion of our initial research, we are pleased to announce our finding: Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet has been translated more than a hundred times, placing it among the ten most translated books in history.

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II

How Did We Get Here?

To put the book and our research into perspective, consider the publishing and translation numbers that stood before this study. According to its publisher, The Prophet, first published in 1923, has been reprinted an astonishing 188 consecutive times in ninety-five years, making it one of the longest-running of any published work, with an estimated worldwide readership of 100 million. I say "estimated" because some countries — parts of Southeast Asia, for example — have not adhered to copyright law, and readership there may be far more widespread than we think. These are among the regions where I have found Gibran's readership growing in large numbers, with no sign of slowing: China alone has at least fifteen full or partial translations of The Prophet.

This study also coincides with the end of the publisher's worldwide copyright privileges, and we wanted the current number officially on the record before that happened. After ninety-five years, Alfred A. Knopf — now part of Penguin Random House — would no longer hold copyright authority over the original English works from the end of 2018. From January 2019 we can expect to see many more iterations of The Prophet and related material around the world: an exciting prospect indeed.

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III

Searching for The Prophet Around the World

My colleague and fellow Gibran researcher Francesco Medici and I always knew Gibran's readership was larger than estimated, and so we began our search by tapping into online library archives and our international networks. What we found has far exceeded our expectations, and surprised even those who thought they knew all there was to know about Gibran.

To our knowledge, no such comprehensive study had been conducted until now, at least not by an academic or private institution. This study has not analysed each translation in detail, and the debate over the authenticity of each individual text is a study in itself. We have simply tallied and collated to reach a base number of available texts, from which there is a solid foundation to build upon.

All translations here were counted on first editions only, and we have verified each listed work by citing at least the writer and publisher of the text. We did not, however, have the capacity to review the full contents of each work individually, nor to test the accuracy of the poetic message and how that relates back to the virtue of the original. It is also difficult to tell whether the translators worked from the original English or from some other language. In summary, we focused solely on the existence and authenticity of the publication itself.

We began at the Kahlil Gibran Museum in Lebanon under the guidance of Mr. Joe Jaja, who sent us a list of forty-nine translations from the museum's private collection. Building on that official list, we verified each copy and quickly added a further four, bringing the number to fifty-three — still within the publicly available range of forty to sixty.

Digging further, Francesco and I emailed our shared file back and forth in what became a daily ritual. "The List," as we came to call it, was growing rapidly. To see The Prophet translated into languages as obscure as Assamese, Occitan, and Uyghur — and even into constructed ones such as Kotava — was astonishing.

As the research went on, the questions that kept coming to mind were: how many more are there, and in what part of the world are they to be found? When we broke the seventy mark we thought it was time to ring the bells, but the numbers kept coming, and week after week we found ourselves adding two, three, or five more.

"List update: 82! 86!" became typical email subject lines, and when we reached ninety confirmed translations we were both astonished. Naturally we wondered: could there be a hundred? Or more? Was it possible we would hit the magic milestone of three digits?

We edged closer and closer — a braille edition among the finds — and then, within reach of the target, we hit a lull. Both of us were out of research currency. After a couple of weeks with no updates it finally came, the email we had hoped for, affirming what no one had thought possible: 102 translations.

Astonished, amazed, and plain bewildered, we both knew we had found something extraordinary — something that would open a new frontier for Gibran's chef-d'œuvre. The official total to date now sits at 104, a number no one could have guessed, not even the most ardent Gibran reader.

As the weeks went by, I began to wonder where this placed The Prophet in the rankings of the most translated books. The answer: according to existing lists, at 104 translations it sits at number ten, just behind the Book of Mormon. More striking still, it is the only book of prose poetry to hold a top-ten position.

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IV

Moving Forward

This discovery is only the beginning. We have included first editions only, and have reason to believe the overall number could exceed two hundred: we know of thirteen to fifteen editions in China alone, another fifteen to twenty in France, and so on.

Remembering how profoundly The Prophet influenced my own life and work, it is deeply touching to be able to share the full extent of Gibran's impact on different generations and cultures around the world. That a book with little to no promotional support across ninety-five years should reach such a readership is remarkable — especially measured against works backed by multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns.

This study remains in progress as we expand beyond first editions. All updates and further announcements are published here at kahlilgibran.com.

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V

The List

Translations of The Prophet — first editions

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All Rights Reserved © Copyright Glen Kalem-Habib and kahlilgibran.com 2019