Contemporary English Version

The CEV project began as a result of studies conducted by Barclay Newman in 1985 into speech patterns used in Books, Magazines, Newspapers, and Television. These studies focused on how English was read and heard. This all lead to a series of test volumes being published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Among the volumes published were Luke Tells the Good News About Jesus (1987), The Good News Travels Fast - The Acts Of The Apostles (1988), A Few Who Dared to Trust God (1990), and A Book About Jesus (1991). In 1991, the CEV New Testament was released (1991 also happened to be the 175th anniversary of the American Bible Society). The CEV Old Testament was released in 1995. The Plain English Campaign awarded the CEV a Crystal Mark award in 1997 in appreciation of the plainness of the CEV's type of English. In 1999, The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books were published. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the American Bible Society published a special booklet entitled God Is Our Shelter and Strength. The booklet contained passages from the Psalter and other parts of the Bible. This same booklet was also published after Hurricane Katrina disaster in September 2005. (The booklet can be downloaded here). In October 2005, the Bible Society in Australia launched a project they called SMSBible, which was the entire CEV in SMS text messages. News reports about the service claimed the Bible took up over 30,000 text messages. On October 25, a church in New Zealand began a project called PodBible to produce an audio version of the CEV available via a podcast or webcast. This project was started in order to reach folks who used the internet and mobile devices. The church behind PodBible also wanted an altertrate reading that was not read by a middle-age American male.

Translation principles and features

In translating the CEV, the translators followed three translation principles. They were: The CEV must be understood by people without stumbling in speech, The CEV must be understood by those with little or no comprehension of Bible language, and the CEV must be understood by all. Like other recent versions, the CEV uses gender-sensitive language for humanity and not for the Godhead. The translation also takes great care to simplify Bible terms into more understandable words and phrases. An example can be found in Exodus 20:14, where the word adultery is translated Be faithful in marriage. The translators have also taken great care to translate the Greek phrase hoi Ioudaioi (literally, “the Jews”) as “the Jewish leaders,” especially in the Gospel of John (as in John 18:14). The CEV translators believe, along with many other (but not all) biblical scholars, that the Greek phrase hoi Ioudaioi in the Gospel of John primarily refers to the Jewish leadership, not to the Jewish people, as a whole. So their translation as “the Jewish leaders” is intended to increase translation accuracy. One result of this translation decision is a reduction of the perception of Anti-Semitism in the New Testament.

References

• Sheeley, Stephen M. and Nash, Robert N. Choosing a Bible. pp. 55-56.
• Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible In Translation. p. 171.

Some of the information in this article comes from an email inquiry by Wikipedian Joshua Holman to Jacquelyn Sapiie, Supervisor of Library Services at the American Bible Society on February 9, 2004.

This article is licensed under the Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Contemporary English Version.”