Lebanon’s greatest cultural export, the late writer, poet, and artist Gibran Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), has united Lebanese worldwide for over a century. In 2023, his masterpiece, The Prophet, celebrated its centennial anniversary. Fans worldwide commemorated this with special gatherings and exhibitions. To contribute, Hilda de Windt-Ayoubi published a newly Dutch-translated version of the book; 10 years ago, she had already translated the book into Papiamento: “To Gibran, Christ was as important as Mohammad.”

By Arthur Blok
“Unda lo bo buska bunitesa, i kon bo ta hasi hañ’é a ménos ku e mes ta bo kaminda i bo guia?” This quote from the 2013 translation of The Prophet in Papiamento is important for the Lebanese-Caribbean-Dutch scholar. Translated into English, it means: “Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?”

With this quote, she hopes to trigger some deeper thoughts and feelings. De Windt-Ayoubi's translation adventure started 10 years ago, in 2013, when "E Profeta" (The Prophet in Papiamento) was published. This book has a special meaning to her, mainly because Gibran forged the spiritual wisdom of the various major religions in one book.

De Windt-Ayoubi: “He shows us simply yet profoundly that they are all of the same spiritual things. It is not the "solidified" religion that is important but the living one. Gibran was a man of Western and Eastern culture/spirituality, and for him, Christ is as important as Mohammad. That is beautifully reflected in the book.”

Her grandfather, on her mother’s side, emigrated to Curaçao in 1907. Like many other inhabitants of what was then called Mount Lebanon, they fled the country to escape religious persecution and economic hardship in the last years of the collapsing Ottoman Rule (1516 until the end of World War I in 1918).

De Windt-Ayoubi married a Curaçaoan anthropologist and urban planner. She studied Spanish and Literature in the Netherlands and later got a Master of Education degree in Spanish at the University of Curaçao. She also studied public relations and English, paints, and is a poet.

Gibran came across Ayoubi’s path in 2008 when a Dutch friend compared her poems to those of Gibran. Like her parents, Gibran hailed from Lebanon. She typed his name into a Google search, and everything startled when she discovered his oeuvre.

In 2011, her son Tamir Tarik bought her The Prophet in Miami as a birthday present. This book touched her so deeply that she got the Dutch translation De Profeet a few months later. While reading this translation, she greatly desired to translate this legendary book into Papiamento, the local language of the Caribbean.

Papiamento is a Portuguese-Creole language with many influences of Spanish and Dutch. It is spoken not only in the three Leeward Islands, Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire, but nowadays plays a functional role in the three Windward Islands, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten and Saba.

De Windt-Ayoubi: “I thought it was nice to do something for the island of Curaçao, where Papiamentu is one of the three official languages ​​and the language used by most of the population.”

Papiamentu is also the primary language of a relatively large group of island inhabitants who, forced by economic and educational necessities, have moved to the Netherlands, creating a Papiamento community of approximately 140.000 persons. It is one of the three official languages of the Dutch Kingdom.

For her unique contribution to the legacy of Gibran, De Windt-Ayoubi received an Award from the Kahlil Gibran International Association. Praising the Papiamento translation as “The most outstanding achievement of the last ten years”.

Kahlil Gibran Collective
With the translation into Papiamento, the Prophet has been translated into 104 languages. “What makes this one so special is that it is for a relatively small group of three hundred fifty thousand who use that language,” said Lebanese-Australian Gibran scholar Glen Kalem-Habib, a founding member of the Kahlil Gibran Collective (KGC), an extensive website about Gibran that co-publishes articles on Gibran with the Liberum

This particular translation makes The Prophet accessible to people in the Caribbean, where this language is still spoken”, he added. Kalem-Habib is an award-winning documentary film producer and chair of the Kahlil Gibran Gallery Limited, a Not-For-Profit organisation dedicated to furthering the scholarship of Gibran's life, work, and legacy. The organisation aims to create international programs, events, and publications about Gibran's life, work, and heritage.

Kalem-Habib: “It is the only book that has never gone out of print since its publication in 1923. It is an enigma, one of these rare works layered in complexities yet so simple that everyone who reads it is touched and often inspired to answer questions like who we are as humanity.”

Dutch Translation
Before starting the translation into Dutch some years ago, De Windt-Ayoubi thoroughly studied Gibran through earlier published biographies, old letters, etc. This information was considered and processed when working on the translation.

What makes this book particular is that some poems by Hilda, inspired while translating the book, have been interwoven in the work and that the scholar Francesco Medici has written an article on the relation between the texts and the paintings by Kahlil Gibran.

De Windt-Ayoubi: “In the past years, when I researched Gibran, I started to understand him better and put the things he wrote in perspective. That is also why the colour (of the cover) version in Papiamento is red, and the new Dutch translation blue refers to the heavens and spirituality, something Gibran was fascinated with. While red symbolises his endurance and passion.”

Why did she also translate it into Dutch? “The translations we knew were all written by Dutch people from overseas. This is the first Caribbean Dutch by a Caribbean Dutch translator, nota bene, of Lebanese descent”, she said. Another motivation was that the mother tongue of inhabitants on the islands is Dutch.

It was not an easy task at all, De Windt-Ayoubi emphasises; because of all her research and revisions, it took her a few years. “Revisions are also an essential part of the translation. I want to compare it with old wine: the translation must be left for a while for the flavour and aroma.”

De Windt-Ayoubi succeeded in translating the spirit and soul of the bestselling book. It was not too difficult because the subject touched her. “You then translate not only with your mind but also your subconscious, so your "inner child", which you could also call your inspiration.”

De Windt-Ayoubi dedicated the book to five women who played an important role in Gibran’s life: Mary E. Haskell, May E. Ziadeh, Marizah Sabbag (his cousin in Brazil), Mariana Gibran (his younger sister) and Hadié Freitas França Ayoubi who supported Gibran Kahlil with ‘reason and passion, yet, not only in word but also in deed’.

“Hadie was my eldest sister, born in Lebanon and raised in Curacao. We were very close, but regretfully, she passed away shortly after I visited Lebanon, where many remembered her. As a girl of two, she sang and danced for the villagers”, she said.

Ambitious plans are underway to start a new translation project of another masterpiece, Jesus, the Son of Man, by Gibran. “Through all my research, I discovered that Jesus played a pivotal role in his life, not the version edited by the catholic church over the years. But the real person who He was.”

The Prophet in Papiamento can be ordered here.

The Prophet in Dutch is self-published but will be distributed internationally very soon.