Chinese Contemporary Bible (Traditional)

The 聖經當代譯本, in English the Chinese Contemporary Bible, is the Chinese Bible of Biblica, the publisher of the NIV. It replaced 當代福音, a free-language New Testament issued in 1974 by Living Bibles International that leaned heavily on the English Living Bible. The decisive difference is that the current text was translated directly from Hebrew and Greek. The copyright years, 1979, 2005, 2007, 2012, 2023, show the layers of revision. This is the open edition in traditional characters, used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and many overseas Chinese communities.

The method is meaning-based: clear sentences in today's Mandarin, without the stiffness of the 1919 Chinese Union Version, while trying to keep what the structure of the original allows. One visible trait is the pronoun 祂, reserved for God and Christ. At times two verses are joined in one block, as in John 3:23-24, and footnotes record alternative readings, as in John 3:3, where "born again" may also be "born from above".

For new readers, young people and anyone put off by the formal Chinese of the Union Version, it opens the text easily. The honest limit is that the clarity comes from translator choices the reader does not always see, and many Chinese churches still preach and memorize from the Union Version. For study, compare with a more formal translation. Midvash also carries the simplified-character edition (ccb).

It is free because Biblica published it under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. You can read, quote and share it without asking, crediting Biblica: "The original work by Biblica, Inc. is available for free at www.biblica.com and open.bible".