In April 2017, two Gibran scholars set out to count every language into which The Prophet had been translated. They arrived at 104. The list has not stopped growing since — it now stands at 112, and the full roll-call is set out here, language by language.
By The Kahlil Gibran Collective
• ❧ KGC ❧ •
KAHLIL GIBRAN COLLECTIVE
By The Kahlil Gibran Collective · Kahlil Gibran Collective · 2020 · kahlilgibran.com
• ❧ KGC ❧ •
I
In April 2017, during the third international conference on Kahlil Gibran held at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, the Gibran scholars Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem-Habib presented their findings on the number of first-edition language translations of The Prophet. The year-long study registered 104 titles. The work continued, and just over a year later the two announced four further translations, which Medici presented at the 5th International Kahlil Gibran Conference in Paris in April 2019.
Four more have since been added, bringing the total to a new record of 112 translations — further cementing The Prophet as one of the most translated books in history, and quite possibly the most translated work of poetry ever published.
In April 2019 Maya El Hajj published a paper drawing on the Medici and Kalem-Habib findings, “Aporias in Literary Translation: A Case Study of The Prophet and Its Translations”. Her study found that The Prophet has scarcely ever ceased to be translated somewhere in the world across the last century, chiefly in Europe and Asia.
• ❧ KGC ❧ •
II
First editions, in alphabetical order by language.
❁
All Rights Reserved © Copyright The Kahlil Gibran Collective 2020
