Childhood, Identity Politics, and Linguistic Negotiation in the Traditional Chinese Translation of the Picture Book The Gruffalo in Taiwan

Translations for Children and the Identity Politics of Contemporary Taiwan

Written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, the picture book The Gruffalo was published in 1999 and has since become a huge international success. According to Donaldson's official website, the book won many awards in the UK, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Book to Read Aloud, and the Experian Big Three Award. It was adapted into a thirty-minute animated film that was broadcast on BBC One on 26 December 2009 on the tenth anniversary of the publication of the book. To date, the book has sold over four million copies worldwide and has been translated into forty languages, including Chinese. The Taiwan Mac Educational Company published the Chinese edition in traditional Chinese characters under the title 怪獸古肥玀 (Gruffalo the Monster) in 2006.¹ Any reader who is familiar with Chinese culture will instantly recognize the story as a reworking of the Chinese fable "狐假虎威" ("The Fox that Borrows the Terror of a Tiger"). Ching-Yen Liu, the Taiwanese translator of The Gruffalo, mentioned in an email interview with me that he had recommended the book to the Taiwanese publisher for publication because he found the language of the source text playful and interesting, and because he found the book to bear a striking resemblance to the Chinese fable.

This fable has been traced back to the ancient Chinese compilation entitled 戰國策 (Zhan Guo Ce, literally Strategies of the Warring States), which records "the strategies and political views of the School of Diplomacy and reveals the historical and social characteristics of the Warring States Period" from 475 to 221 BC ("Zhan Guo Ce"). In this book, a minister of the Chu State tells a fable to the king about a hungry tiger catching a fox in an attempt to curry favour with him. In order to save its life, the cunning fox tells the tiger that God has appointed the fox to be the king of the beasts and that all other animals should fear it. When the tiger observes that all the other animals scatter upon the approach of the fox (whom the tiger is accompanying), the gullible tiger is fooled into believing the fox's claim. By this fable, the minister flatteringly suggests that the king is the real reason the rival states respect and fear his top general. In other words, the fox is to the tiger as the general is to the king.

The Gruffalo tells the story of a mouse that outwits its predators in a similar way. While strolling through the forest, the mouse comes across a fox, then an owl, and then a snake, each of which invites the mouse to his home for a meal. Knowing the invitation to be a ploy, the mouse declines and scares each of them off by saying that it is on its way to have a meal with a Gruffalo and that each of them happens to be the Gruffalo's favourite meal. Later, by a strange coincidence, the mouse comes across a creature whose appearance conforms to its previous description of the Gruffalo. Seeing that the monster intends to eat it, the mouse claims to be the scariest animal in the forest and invites the disbelieving monster to see what happens when the other animals encounter the mouse. Like the animals in the Chinese fable, the beasts are frightened away at the sight of the monster walking behind the mouse, giving the monster the impression that they are frightened of the mouse.

The association between The Gruffalo and the Chinese fable is confirmed by Donaldson herself. During an interview published in The Observer in 2004, she explained that her story is a retelling of "a contemporary version of an Eastern folk tale about a child who cons a jungle tiger into submission by the cunning expedient of having it follow in her footsteps" (McCrum). On her official website Donaldson states that her book "was going to be about a tiger," but...