by Philippe Maryssael, retired translator and terminologist, translator of Kahlil Gibran and contributor to the Kahlil Gibran Collective.
Arlon, Belgium, May 21, 2022.
Khalil Gibran’s all-time favourite The Prophet (link 1 & link 2) got a fresh treatment by illustrator Pete Katz as a graphic novel adaptation.
Pete Katz is a half-Irish, half-Greek illustrator and writer, born in the East End of London. He has been a freelance illustrator for over twenty years and has worked for clients including Image Comics, Oxfam, Harvey Nichols, Barnes & Noble, Scholastic, Canterbury Classics, and the British Museum. As well as illustrating his graphic novels, he adapts and writes the scripts for most of them and is published worldwide in fifteen languages. Along with working on graphic novels he also produces portraits, t-shirt graphics, and many other commissions.
On 20 October 2020, Canterbury Classics published the graphic novel The Prophet.
Cover of The Prophet adapted by Pete Katz (ISBN-13: 978-1-64517-242-0)
Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved…
Illustration of the sermon On Prayer
The description of the graphic novel from the website of the publisher Canterburry Classics reads as follows: An enduring and moving commentary on the human condition since its publication in 1923, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet has been adapted as a graphic novel by award-winning illustrator Pete Katz. In this elegant thread-bound edition, Gibran's classic poem is transformed into a narrative that shows how the words of the prophet Al Mustafa can help modern readers overcome personal struggles. Gibran's original poems are incorporated into full-color scenes so that readers can gain a deeper appreciation for one of the most popular books of the twentieth century.
Based on our searching, this graphic novel has so far been translated into one language, French. On 19 August 2021, it was published by Guy Trédaniel (https://www.editions-tredaniel.com/). As soon as other languages are covered, updates will be posted.
Cover of Le Prophète adapted by Pete Katz and translated by Sandrine Nahmias (ISBN-13: 978-2-84933-590-1)
Sources:
Philippe Maryssael was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1962. He studied translation in Brussels in the early 1980s. He later studied terminology and terminotics, the set of techniques involving the use of computer software in conducting terminology research on vast text corpora and deploying terminology database and translation memory solutions in support of the translation business.
His first job was as a bank clerk in Brussels. After a couple of years, he became a professional translator and terminology pioneer in the insurance and financial sectors before he moved to Luxembourg and joined a European financial institution as a translator-reviser, terminologist, and computer-aided translation and terminology tools specialist. There, after a decade, he changed the course of his career and became a business process manager involved in paving the way to the institution-wide dissemination of business process optimization and re-engineering practices.
In July 2017, he decided to retire. The time was right for him to indulge in his life-long interest in the writings of Kahlil Gibran. He started collecting first editions of the books that Gibran wrote in English. He also started comparing the numerous French translations of his works. The natural next step was his intention to provide personal translations of Gibran’s English books into French and to have them published. His first published work came out at the end of 2018: Le Fol, a bilingual presentation of the text of The Madman and his new translation, with an in-depth analysis of Gibran's use of the English language and a study of several themes across his entire body of books.
In February 2020, Philippe Maryssael published his second book by Gibran, Le Sable et l'Écume, translated into French from Sand and Foam (1926). His third book, Le Prophète, from Gibran's masterpiece The Prophet, has been available since December 2020.
In December 2021 and February 2022 respectively, Philippe Maryssael's fourth and fifth books, Le Prophète (as a limited-edition, monolingual print with white lettering on a black background), and Le Précurseur (The Forerunner, as a bilingual edition) were published.
More information on Philippe Maryssael and his translation projects can be found on his personal website at http://www.maryssael.eu/en/.
Philippe Maryssael also maintains a new website dedicated to Kahlil Gibran. Focussing on his personal translations into French of Gibran's books, the site is at http://www.khalilgibran.eu/.
