In July 2016, China Social Science Publishing House published the first Chinese translation of Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World — the landmark biography by Jean Gibran and Kahlil G. Gibran. The translator was Dr. Zheng Ma, the leading researcher of Gibran in Chinese scholarship, whose work has done more than any other to deepen Chinese readers' understanding of Gibran's life, art, and enduring legacy.
Kahlil Gibran Collective · 10 July 2018
Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World — Chinese translation, China Social Science Publishing House, 2016. Translated by Dr. Zheng Ma.
Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World — the authoritative English-language biography by Jean Gibran and Kahlil G. Gibran — was first published in 1974 and remains widely regarded as the most comprehensive and rigorously researched life of the poet ever written. Drawing on first-hand accounts, previously unpublished letters, paintings, manuscripts, and personal documents, it set the standard against which all subsequent Gibran biography has been measured. Its arrival in Chinese translation in 2016, more than four decades after its original publication, was a landmark moment for Gibran scholarship in China.
The translator, Dr. Zheng Ma, brings to this work an unmatched depth of expertise. In 2006, she completed her doctoral thesis — the first ever on Kahlil Gibran in Chinese scholarship — examining the historical, cultural, and spiritual connections of Gibran's literary works with their Western contexts. That thesis challenged the simplified and ideological framing of Gibran's identity that had long dominated Chinese academic writing on the subject. Four years later, her monograph The Study of Kahlil Gibran from the Intercultural Perspective was published to wide academic recognition, described as "the most comprehensive and in-depth" study of Gibran produced in Chinese scholarship to date.
Dr. Zheng Ma worked on the Chinese translation from 2011 to 2016 in close partnership with publisher Mrs. Li Bingqing, who initiated and oversaw the project. Together they navigated the translation copyright, revised successive drafts, and managed the book's publication and promotion. Wenyibao — one of China's oldest and most respected newspapers of literature and the arts — published news of the translation's release in 2016. An introduction to the biography subsequently appeared in the Journal of Middle Eastern Studies of Peking University.
Dr. Zheng Ma has acknowledged with particular gratitude the support of the late Professor Suheil Bushrui, during her year as a visiting researcher at the George and Lisa Zakhem Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland (June 2013 to May 2014). She has also noted that the historical research underpinning His Life and World provided an important foundation for Professor Bushrui and Joe Jenkins's own major biography, Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet — A New Biography, which she describes as "one of the most in-depth biographical writings on Gibran from the lens of philosophy and civilisation dialogue."
Among the international Gibran scholars who sent messages of congratulation on publication was Dr. Henri Zoghaib, Lebanese author of Kahlil Gibran: People and Places, who wrote: "Congratulations for this huge work you achieved. This Jean and Kahlil Gibran work is by far the best biography that has ever been written. I have a copy of it and I often dive into it to refresh my memory about our Lebanese great Gibran."
Dr. Zheng Ma holds a PhD, MEd, and MA, and is a leading researcher in the Chinese scholarship of Kahlil Gibran and Arab American literature. Her research spans intercultural studies, diasporic and indigenous studies, and anti-colonial praxis. Her monograph on Gibran from the intercultural perspective remains the standard reference work in its field in China. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Maryland and continues to publish and teach on Gibran's legacy in the Chinese academic context.
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