The Chinese Union Version (CUV) (和合本; pinyin: héhé běn; literally “harmonized/united version”) is the predominant Chinese language translation of the Bible used by Chinese Protestants. It is considered by many to be the Chinese Protestant’s Bible. For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... The Revised Version (or English Revised Version) of the Bible is a late 19th-century British revision of the King James Version of 1611. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... Pinyin is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin, where pin means spell and yin means sound. The most common variant of pinyin in use is called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: , Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n), also known as scheme... Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... Protestantism is a general grouping of denominations within Christianity. ...

The CUV was translated by a panel with members from many different Protestant denominations, using the English Revised Version as a basis and original manuscripts for crosschecking. Work on the CUV began in 1890 and originally, three versions of the CUV were planned—two classical Chinese versions and a vernacular Mandarin version. The CUV was completed in 1919, with one amalgamated classical Chinese translation and one vernacular Mandarin translation. With the onset of May Fourth Movement , and the associated New Culture Movement, the CUV is the first translated work to be published in Vernacular Chinese. A denomination, in the Christian sense of the word, is an identifiable religious body under a common name, structure, and/or doctrine. ... The Revised Version (or English Revised Version) of the Bible is a late 19th-century British revision of the King James Version of 1611. ... 1890 (MDCCCXC) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar). ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. ... 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement. ... Vernacular Chinese (pinyin: báihuà; Wade-Giles: paihua) is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. ...

The CUV in use today is the vernacular Mandarin version, published in two slightly different editions (called the Shen Edition and the Shangti Edition), differing in the way the word “God” is translated.

The vernacular Chinese language has changed a lot since 1919. Indeed, CUV’s language sounds stilted to modern readers. Furthermore, a lot of Chinese characters used in the CUV have fallen into disuse and cannot be found in commonly-available dictionaries today. As a result, work is underway to modernize the CUV.

The CUV is published by the Hong Kong Bible Society, a bible society affiliated with the United Bible Societies. However, the text of the CUV has fallen into the public domain. A Bible society is a non-profit organization (usually ecumenical Protestant in makeup) devoted to translating, publishing and distributing the Bible for free or at subsidized low cost. ... A Bible society is a non-profit organization (usually ecumenical Protestant in makeup) devoted to translating, publishing and distributing the Bible for free or at subsidized low cost. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

The CUV is currently available in both traditional and simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese characters are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ... Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. ...

Typography of the Chinese Union Version

Text in the Chinese Union Version is typeset generally vertically from right to left, with some captions for illustrations typeset horizontally from left to right. The typography is unusual, with many archaisms and some ad-hoc typographic devices.

The CUV employs old-style punctuation, setting most punctuation marks as if they were ruby. It uses the standard proper name mark only for personal names, but an ad-hoc punctuation mark that can be described as a “double proper name mark” is used for geographical names; both of these are typeset on the right-hand side, instead of the currently-standard left. The book title mark is not used, and book titles are not marked in the CUV in any way. Chapter and section headings are typeset in sans serif type. Ruby characters, also called ruby, rubi or furigana, are sometimes used in the typography of ideographic languages, especially Japanese and Chinese. ... Gothic Gothic typeface (ゴシック体, goshikku-tai) is the second most commonly used style of printed Japanese characters, after Mincho. ...

Verse numbers are typeset on the right-hand side of the first word of each verse as ruby. They are also repeated in the margins.

New paragraphs start after chapter and section headings. Within each section, however, paragraph breaks are indicated by the traditional Chinese pilcrow, a thin, sans-serif circle about the size of a Chinese character. A pilcrow from the font Gentium, designed by J. Victor Gaultney, 2002. ...

In the Shen Edition of the CUV, a full-width space is added before each word “God” so that the paging between the Shen and Shangti editions are identical; this extra space is interpreted as the traditional honorific marker. Shang Di or Shang Ti (Wade-Giles) (上帝, pinyin Shàngdì), literally translated, Lord Above, Sovereign Above, or Lord On High, in Chinese culture, is the name used both in traditional Chinese religion as well as Chinese Christianity for the Supreme Deity. ...

Comments and notes are typeset as warichu. Additionally, an ad-hoc punctuation mark that looks like a dashed underline is used to mark editorially-inserted words; like the two varieties of the proper name mark, this mark is also typeset on the right-hand side. Warichū (割注 or 割註, sometimes 割り注, literally “split annotation”) is the Japanese word for the traditional Chinese and Japanese typographic device of typesetting in small double lines editorial comments, notes, parenthetical comments, and other annotations that may or may not belong to the text proper. ...

Typesetting the proper name mark on the right would have caused clashes with verse numbers and most punctuation marks. However, when clashes occur, the proper name and similar punctuation marks that cause the clash are partially truncated to avoid omitting any punctuation marks.

Derivatives of the Chinese Union Version

Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation

Because of the old-style and ad-hoc punctuation used, the punctuation of the CUV thus looks both archaic and somewhat strange to the modern reader.

The result of updating the CUV’s punctuation in line with modern usage is the Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation (CUVNP) (新標點和合本, pinyin: xīn-biāodiǎn héhé-běn, jyutping: san1 biu1 dim2 wo4 hap6 bun2). Work on the CUVNP has completed and the CUVNP has already been published. Pinyin is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin, where pin means spell and yin means sound. The most common variant of pinyin in use is called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: , Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n), also known as scheme... Jyutping (Traditional Chinese: 粵拼; Simplified Chinese: 粤拼; pinyin: yuèpÄ«n; Yale: yuhtpÄ«ng; Jyutping: jyut6ping3; sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. ...

Revised Chinese Union Version

Work on the Revised Chinese Union Version (RCUV) (和合本修訂版, pinyin: héhé-běn xiūdìng-bǎn, jyutping: wo4 hap6 bun2 sau1 ding6 baan2) is also underway to update the language of the CUV while keeping the original CUV translation as intact as possible.

Other derivatives

After the text of the CUV has fallen into public domain, publishers began publishing slight variations of the CUV without identifying that these are different versions.

Online versions

The CUV is readily available online, due to its public domain status. The text in the online versions, however, is slightly different because Big5 does not contain all the characters needed to typeset the CUV. Big-5 or Big5 is a character encoding method used in Taiwan (Republic of China) and Hong Kong for Traditional Chinese characters. ...

References

• Hong Kong Bible Society — official publisher of the CUV; detailed history of the CUV can be found there
• « 聖經 : 香港聖經公會印發 » (The Holy Bible : Printed and published by the Hong Kong Bible Society)

See also

• New Chinese Version
• Studium Biblicum Version
• Today's Chinese Version

The New Chinese Version (NCV) (新譯本) is a Chinese language Bible translation that was completed in 1992. ... The Studium Biblicum Version (思高本; pinyin: sīgāo běn; jyutping: si1 gou1 bun2; “Franciscan version“) is the predominant Chinese language translation of the Bible used by Chinese Catholics. ... The Todays Chinese Version (TCV) (現代中文譯本) is a recent translation of the Bible into modern Chinese. ...

External link

• O-Bible: - Has the CUV in GB and Big5 encoding along with the English Authorized and Basic translations
• Logos Bible Software: Offers a downloadable version of both the Shen and Shangti Editions with new punctuation for the Libronix Digital Library System, its Unicode-based reader client.