An Analysis Of Modern Christian Missionary Animal Novels

Since the mid-1800 s, the Missionaries in China have paid more and more attention to translating and creating children’s books, including a large number of parable set, fairy tales, stories and novels, which also contains some precious works of animal fiction. Animal fiction is the main part of modern Animal literature, in which specially written for children is also an important part of modern Children’s literature. Christian missionaries in China in the early 20 th century timely translated a number of animal fictions for Chinese children readers, which brought the modern animals view and new education for children’s life and growth. “the Animals’ Strike”, “the Dog’s Autobiography” and “the Life in the Forest” selected in this paper are three typical animal fictions translated by the missionary at that time. The literary translation strategies and the themes in those fictions become the general translation trend of missionary animal fiction.With the methods of Historical Analysis, Document Analysis and Text Intensive Reading, based on the consideration of the relationship between the foreign cultures and the Chinese modern children’s literature, firstly, from the perspective of cross-cultural literary translation, this paper analyzes the cultural adaptation strategy in the translation of missionaries animal fiction, and explores the new features and the general variation trend of the translation which meets the requirements of the historical background in China, then examines the trendy impact for the narrative mode of Chinese modern fiction. Secondly, from the perspective of Children’s literature, this paper confirms that the missionaries animal fiction has significant influence on the development of modern Chinese Children’s literature, based on three relationships, the animal fiction and the new development of modern children’s literature theme, the animal fiction and the education for children’s life and growth, the animal fiction and the modern ecological moral construction in China. The paper consists of introduction, three chapters of the main text and conclusion. The introduction contains historical development of Chinese Animal literature, the outline of the paper, and the current research at home and abroad for this proposition. The main text consists of three chapters. The first chapter makes a brief introduction for Chinese and western cultural background of the missionary animal fictions translation in the early 20 th century, and then probes the development track of the missionary animal fiction in China, following by introduction of the important translators and their works in the early 20 th century, focusing on the three typical works, “theAnimals’ Strike”, “the Dog’s Autobiography” and “the Life in the Forest”. The second chapter, from the respective of cross-cultural literary translation, based on above three works, analyzes the cultural adaptation strategy of the missionary animal fiction translation. Furthermore, by comparing the animal fiction with the other missionary’s children literature which published at about the same time, this paper finds out the new characteristics in the animal fiction’s translation which aims to adapt to the changing times. The third chapter, from the perspective of Children’s literature,especially Animal literature, analyzes the important impact by missionary animal fiction on Chinese children readers and the development of theme and subject of modern Chinese Children’s literature, thus to assess its value in the history of Chinese modern Children’s literature it should have; The Conclusion reiterates the theme and summarizes the full text. The animal fictions translated by Christian missionaries in China in the beginning of the 20 th century are very precious in modern Chinese Children’s literature history, and its timely introduction exactly meets the modern Chinese children’s reading expectation for animal novels. Its original intention is to make Christian education for children, but objectively it brings the education for children’s life & growth and the ecological moral enlightenment for Chinese modern writers, which is more worthy of being focused and affirmed.