The Chinese Union Bible with New Punctuation, commonly referred to as Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation (CUNP or CUVNP) in the Christian circles, is a Protestant bible with modern punctuation for the Chinese Union Version, a bible translation for Chinese believers. It was revised in word choice, paragraph division, and punctuation by a team of Bible scholars, translation consultants and editors and published by the United Bible Societies in 1988, in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
Mainly, modern punctuation marks are used to replace the old punctuation marks in the Chinese Union Version.
If the original text is in poetic style, poetic arrangement is used.
The wording of the Old and New Testaments is unified as much as possible, and modern common words are used, such as using "夠(enough)" instead of "å½Â"; "æ (only, talent)" instead of "çºÂ".
More appropriate names of people and place are used, such as "Ã¥ÂÂ便" (Reuben) instead of "æµÂ便", "該æ (Caesar) was changed to "å±æÂÂ". In Romans 15:23, "士çÂÂé " (Spain) was changed to "西çÂÂçÂÂ". In Genesis 15:18, "伯æÂÂ大河" (the Euphrates River) was changed to "å¹¼ç¼æÂÂåºÂæ²³" etc.
The third person pronouns are divided into "ä»Â" (he) for male, "她" (she) for female, "ç " (it) for animals, and "å®Â" (it) for things, according to the situation, so that readers can distinguish them more easily;
For subordinate place names or personal names in the text, "çÂÂ" is added in a few places to avoid confusion. For example, "ç¶大伯å©æÂÂ" (Bethlehem, Judah) was changed to "ç¶大çÂÂ伯å©æÂÂ".
The subheadings have parallel verses for readers' reference.
The Taiwan Bible Society has published a series of "New Punctuation Union Version Bible Study Books" that provides information on the history, customs, and culture of each book of the Bible in concise text and color pictures, and explains the development of literature and ideas therein.
The Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation was published by the United Bible Societies in 1988. In 1989, the China Christian Council published the Union Version with Simplified Chinese Characters and Modern Punctuation. This version had similar changes to the Union Version with New Punctuation, except that it was printed in simplified Chinese characters.
The New Punctuation Union Version is basically not changed from the original Union Version in terms of wording and style. The relationship between the 1988 New Punctuation Union Version and the 1919 Union Version is like the relationship between the 1769 King James Version and the 1611 King James Version. The former has updated spelling and punctuation to make it consistent with modern times.
1. "æµÂ便" (Reuben): The "New Union Version" publication notes mentioned that indecent translation names, such as "æµÂ便", would be replaced by "Ã¥ÂÂ便". However, it did not consider that "æµÂ便" also means "fluent writing without stagnation". Moreover, if the word "便" is inconvenient, it should be changed to "æ¬".
2. âÂÂæ¨羠â (Tyre): The 1988 Union Version with New Punctuation changed "æ¨羠" to âÂÂæ³°ç¾âÂÂ, but the 1989 Union Version with Simplified Chinese Characters and Modern Punctuation published by the China Christian Council did not change it to âÂÂæ³°ç¾â because âÂÂæ¨羠â is closer to the pronunciation of the original text. The 2010 Revised Union Version changed it back to âÂÂæ¨羠âÂÂ.
Since the 1988 Union Version with New Punctuation changed the punctuation, paragraph divisions, and place names of the Union Version, and the copyright of the 1919 Union Version had expired, many publishers followed suit and published their own Union Versions with new punctuation. There are also many electronic versions of the Union Version with new punctuation available for download on the Internet. These âÂÂnew punctuationâ versions that are not authorized by the United Bible Societies may have problems with typographical errors.