Wild animal stories, as a children’s literary genre, often oscillate between authentic representations of animal behaviour and various degrees of anthropomorphic projection. The study identifies how the voices of wild animals are articulated in two contrasting Chinese wild animal stories, Shixi Shen’s Hongcai (2010/2019) and Gerelchimeg Blackcrane’s Heiyan (2006/2017), and how culture-specific understandings of genre, gender and environmental education are negotiated in the published translations. Informed by Michael Cronin’s model of “eco-translation” and David Herman’s “narratology beyond the human,” it argues that the eco-translation of the source texts is mainly manifested in the reduction of sexism and sentimental anthropomorphism, problematisation of genetic descriptions and reappropriation of non-fictional texts. These strategic interventions enhance eco-translation’s potential as an anti-anthropocentric narratology, a co-authored life writing that recognises the generic ambivalence within animal storytelling practice and further speaks for nature with more conscious allocation of agency across the species lines.