The YouVersion Experience: Now Available Completely in Russian

Bible App™ Icon on Russia Map YouVersion.com and the Bible App™ (on iPhone/iPad/iPod touch, BlackBerry, and Android) are now available entirely in Russian. What this means is that for every interaction you have with the YouVersion community, if you like, you may connect completely in Russian. Whether it’s reading high quality translations of the Bible, using menus and other tools, reading recent blog posts, requesting and receiving technical support from native speakers—even in direct communications with YouVersion through Facebook and Twitter or email—YouVersion’s incredible volunteers are bringing Russian to you.

Russian represents our fifth complete language launch, after Norwegian, Spanish, Chinese, and of course English. But this is only the beginning. YouVersion’s vision is to make the Bible freely available to as many people as possible, no matter where they live or what language they speak. If you have friends and loved ones who might enjoy engaging with God’s Word in Russian, please let them know about YouVersion’s exciting new options. And keep checking this space—we’ll be sharing more Russian language news here in the coming weeks!

New in the Bible App and at YouVersion.com: Segond 21

We’re happy to announce that the Segond 21 version of the Bible, published for the first time by the Geneva Society in 2007, is now available at YouVersion.com and in the Bible App­™.  We hope you’ll be as excited as we are—Segond 21 is one of the versions most requested by the YouVersion community!

The Segond 21 version took 12 years of dedicated translation work based on original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, but it also incorporates more recently available information. According to Wikipedia, this Bible’s sponsors describe it as “L’original, avec les mots d’aujourd’hui”. Segond 21 has been a top-selling Bible among French speakers, making an appearance in the top 200 books sold at Amazon France. In fact, in their category for spirituality/Christian books, it’s even number one!

At YouVersion, we’re passionate about making God’s Word freely available to as many people as possible, wherever they live. And engaging with the Bible in the language of your heart provides a deep, rich connection with God’s great story of love, and with your faith. If you have friends and loved ones who you think might enjoy reading the Segond 21, please let them know!

YouVersion Users Bookmark More Than 20 Million Passages

Last November, we added the ability for you to use your free YouVersion account to sync your bookmarks from the Bible App™ with YouVersion.com. In that short period of time, millions more people have joined our YouVersion community, creating free accounts and adding bookmarks of their own. Just recently, we reached a new milestone we wanted to share:

Together, we’ve saved more than 20 million bookmarks
in the Bible App™ and at YouVersion.com.

Whether you want to remind yourself of one of God’s promises, regularly re-read a special passage to help you memorize it, or even just have your favorite verse to share always close at hand, bookmarks are a reliable, effective memory assistant. We’ve prepared the following infographic to tell you everything you might want to know about how the YouVersion community is using bookmarks. Enjoy! 

(Click the infographic to enlarge.)


Thanks to YouVersion Partners, Several Chinese Bible Translations Available Now, More on the Way

If you have friends or loved ones who might enjoy engaging with God’s Word in Chinese—whether Traditional or Simplified—please let them know that YouVersion has something just for them. YouVersion would like to take this opportunity to formally thank the publishers of the Chinese New Version for making their Bible versions available to our community, both in Simplified Chinese (CNVS) and Traditional Chinese (CNV). We’d also like to express our gratitude to Biblica for making available the Chinese Contemporary Bible (CCB), and to Holman for their Chinese Standard Bible (CSB). And we’re very happy to announce today a new partnership with Hong Kong Bible Society that allows us to soon offer you updated punctuated versions of the Chinese Union Version (CUV) and the Chinese Union Simplified Version (CUVS) as well as their Revised Chinese Union Version Simplified Bible (RCUV and RCUVS). Be on the lookout for these great additions, coming soon for offline access as well!

YouVersion’s simple mission has always been to make the Bible freely available to as many people as possible. Each of these generous partners understands the tremendous opportunity God is giving us to together reach this generation of Chinese speakers and readers: with the story of His love. We are honored and deeply grateful for them to join us.

YouVersion: Reaching Chinese Readers—Wherever They Are

The Bible App™ Icon in Chinese, with MapIf you’ve been keeping up with recent announcements in the YouVersion community, you may have noticed some significant developments in our Chinese language efforts: more Bibles in Chinese, translating the Bible App’s interface into both Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and communication and technical support in both languages. Here’s why we’re especially excited about all of these things:

  • Number of People. YouVersion’s simple mission is to make it easy for as many people as possible to freely engage with the Bible, no matter where they live. And Chinese speakers represent one of the largest people groups in the world. According to The World Factbook, the population of mainland China alone is now more than 1.3 billion people. Wikipedia estimates that some 40 million additional “Overseas Chinese” live outside the country. Although large concentrations of Chinese are present in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the United States, and Singapore, the truth is, a lot of Chinese people live almost everywhere in the world.
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  • The Written Word. Several decades ago, in an effort to raise literacy, the Chinese government “simplified” the way that many Chinese characters are formed. Their hope was that if characters were less complicated to write than the “traditional” forms, more people would learn to read and write them. Today, both of these written forms are now practiced by Chinese, depending largely on how they were taught as children, and also on their personal preferences. Because these two written forms are now the most popular among Chinese the world over, YouVersion’s amazing volunteers have worked tirelessly to translate YouVersion’s interfaces and services into both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. This even includes technical support! (Check it out in Simplified or Traditional.)
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  • Spoken Languages. The most commonly spoken Chinese dialects are Standard or Simplified (Mandarin) and Yue (Cantonese). Now, just to be clear, these are spoken languages, independent of the various forms of the written characters. Native speakers often use both of these most common dialects, although they may also use other variations, typically representative of their family’s traditional origins in their ancestral homeland. As we enter into new partnerships for audio Bibles, we intend to offer as many spoken options as we can. In fact, we’re honored to already offer the Chinese Standard Bible (CSB), as read in the Mandarin dialect.

We’re thrilled to be able to expand what we offer to Chinese readers and speakers, especially considering the enormous potential to reach out to millions of people with the life-changing story of God’s love.