Mattias Ripa

Mattias Ripa is a Swedish translator who worked from French into English. His name is on the English edition of one of the best-known graphic memoirs of recent decades, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, where he is credited with translating the first part.

He did not write the book, and that is the reason he appears on WebToTell: the credit is a translator's credit. Beyond Persepolis, little of his work is documented in sources we can rely on, so this page sticks to what the record shows. What the job involved is easier to describe. Satrapi's story follows a girl growing up in Iran through the revolution and the war with Iraq, and the English text has to carry a child's blunt questions and the humor of the retelling without flattening either.

The French original was published first. The English version came from Pantheon in 2003 as Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, translated by Ripa and Blake Ferris. Pantheon later gathered the whole story in The Complete Persepolis in 2007, and library catalogues credit Ripa there with the first part.

Where to start: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is the volume that carries his translation and the obvious first read. It begins with Satrapi's childhood in Iran and stands on its own. If you want the full arc, including Satrapi's years in Europe, pick up The Complete Persepolis.