506讚美詩, 1.3

506 Hymns

The Chinese Union Version Hymnal Revision Group of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, since 2006, has been planning and revising the Hymnal work, which has been completed this year. Despite the long and difficult process, each committee member performed their duties professionally but challenging to balance. We are deeply honored and grateful for the opportunity to participate in this revision work, thanking God wholeheartedly!

After nearly fifty years since the release of the existing Hymnal, this highly meaningful new version of Hymns has been successfully completed, all for the glory and praise of God. We hope that these hymns, transformed by God, become even more beautiful and meaningful, and fervently pray that God will greatly use this hymnal to help more people know Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace and accept Him as their personal Savior.

The Hymnal Revision Group has set out four working directions through prayer and discussion: Music, Theology, Translation, and Chinese (Text) teams. We carefully invited elites within the organization as well as group members from both domestic and overseas to jointly accomplish this formidable mission.

• Music Team:
  • - Removing about one hundred and forty songs rarely sung from the original Hymnal; reviewing the retained hymns and adjusting certain tunes to ensure mass accessibility.
  • - Providing possible hymns and melodies based on a variety of hymns and feedback from brothers and sisters in Christ for final selection by the Revision Group to enhance the quality of church hymns.
  • - Adapting the number of verses in some hymns to match those in the English Hymnal of our church for the convenience of overseas Chinese churches and bilingual churches.
  • - Including new worship hymns that are familiar and suitable for various gatherings.
  • - Adding commonly used simplified musical notation and an index of simplified musical notation at the beginning of Hymnal scores.
  • - Performing multiple reviews and proofs of both staff music notation and simplified musical notation.
• Translation Team:
  • - Selecting over a hundred songs from our church's English Hymnal, with assistance from eight outstanding individuals proficient in Chinese, English, and music from both domestic and overseas locations, to assist in translation. Translation principles aim at accurate expression while ensuring lyrical perfection to encourage brothers and sisters to praise God more through music, living victoriously.
  • - Striving for rhyme in translated song lyrics while maintaining fluency compared to the original text.
  • - Supplementing lyrics to ensure equivalence in verse count between the Chinese and English versions of the Hymnal.
• Chinese (Text) Team:
  • - Reviewed by four Chinese professors from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan for each song lyric with utmost care to ensure accuracy.
  • - Polishing vocabulary and rhyme to enhance fluency.
  • - Striving to retain the original content of lyrics while modifying overly complex or less commonly used language.

Main features include:

• - Hymn number index for selecting hymns by number.
• - Stroke index for selecting hymns by stroke count in the hymn title.
• - Bookmark feature to save favorite hymns for easy access.
• - Hymn MIDI accompaniment.
• - Hymn search function allowing searches by hymn title, lyrics, or hymn number.
• - Ability to share hymns with other software on your device.