New Century Version

The 1991 edition represents a more extensive revision of the New Century Version, prepared with a broader and older readership in mind than the simplified translations from which the line descends. It covers the complete Bible, translated from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, with the original-language texts serving as its base and a functional, readable translation philosophy guiding its rendering of meaning into contemporary English. Bibliographically it is classed as a substantial revision rather than a light updating, taking the New Century Version of 1987 as both its predecessor and its base translation. Its distinctive features include longer sentences and a range of stylistic changes, which together distinguish it from the child-focused International Children's Bible lineage out of which the NCV grew. The revision thus belongs to the wider late twentieth-century movement toward accessible, idiomatic English versions intended for general reading as well as for young audiences.