It is fashionable to conclude that prior to the release (in 1881/82) of the Greek New Testament of Westcott and Hort, that there was NO controversy involving Bible Translation.

But the facts speak loudly to the contrary. Bible Translation was controversial ever since about ten minutes after the efforts began to make it available to people in their native tongue in the time of Jerome.

In modern times, Bible Translation has remained controversial because historically, the practice of being able to learn the contents of the Bible was restricted to anyone who was not a Roman Catholic Priest. This was done in order to keep the information in the New Testament from reaching the average person.

Today, revolutions and political change have already altered the political landscape of the world. But at the time that the Knowledge of the New Testament was forbidden, it was hoped that this act of censorship would continue to promote the divine right of kings to rule, and to remain unaccountable to the people.

The Bible was available in Latin, and the Roman Catholic Priests were instructed in Latin. Most Roman priests did not study the Bible much, and concentrated much more on Canon law, ecclesiastical pronouncements and verdicts issued by the bureaucrats in the Vatican and those who directed the persecution of all non-Vatican Christians by Dominican, Benedictine and Jesuit priests working for the Holy Congregation of the Faith, also known as the Inquisition.

The Vatican issued many edicts banning not only the reading of the Bible by anyone not approved by the Roman Catholic Church, but also issued edicts against the Translation of the Bible into the common language spoken by the People. The Vatican continued to mandate even the text of the Mass in Latin in all nations until the 1960s.

The history of Bible translation begins with the advent of bringing in Bibles into nations where the Roman Catholic Church had forbidden its use by the people. Martin Luther made great progress for the German People, while Calvin made progress in Linguistic Freedom for the French Translations of the Bible and Diodati undertook the Translation of the Bible into Italian. Reina and Valera combined their efforts for Spanish into the Valera Edition of 1602, while Almeida’s commitment to an accurate translation overcame some of the censorship attempts in the Portuguese empire.

It is true that the Reformation finally achieved Religious Tolerance and Freedom of Religion for most Europeans in theory, though often not in practice. The Vatican still practiced censorship in lands under Roman Catholic dominion through the censors (see books dealing with the Roman Catholic Index of banned books), while the Inquisition remained alive and working until 1848 in Italy and 1868 in Spain. It was democracy and democratic revolutions that finally ended the power of the Inquisition, not any voluntary suspension of it by the Vatican. In the United Kingdom, the Church of England struggled to walk a line between state sponsorship of the Church and Freedom of Religion, which usually resulted in a tepid compromise, and the mistreatment through fostering ignorance and neglect of those who worshiped within the confines of Anglican Church walls.

The result of 200 years of decay of the Church of England can be seen today. It is rather sad. It abandoned its historic heritage early in the 1800s. During most of the 1800s, the Church of England (the Anglican Church) was beset by two large problems: Secularists and Evolutionists attacking it from without, and the Roman Catholic Church assailing it from within, due to a theological movement known as the Tractarian movement designed to cause the Church of England to abandon the Reformation and align itself back with the Roman Church.

In Germany, the results of antagonism to the Roman Catholic Church dovetailed into resentment of the Imperial family and its own attempts to legitimate their "divine right" to rule.

The People were sick and tired of bad monarchs, and members of the Noble classes that were destructive, destructive to the people in their morality, in their oppressive laws, and in their sense of indulgence that took place often at the expense of the poor and the common classes. 

The result was a working alliance between opponents of monarchy and opponents of State Churches.

[a State Church means a Church that is financially supported by the Ruling Monarch and funded by the Government - Most churches that have tried this approach of government funding have lost their vitality, their strength, their authenticity and their spiritual power. ].

 The Roman Catholic Church was resented in Germany. But they were not the only State Church. Recall that Germany was divided into dozens of smaller areas each administered by their own noble or royal family. Some of those areas had given official support to the Lutheran Church.

The effort was well intentioned. But Martin Luther was barely dead when the efforts to revise and change his work and the theology he promoted were underway. The results started a conflict within Lutheranism. The statists (those in favor of making the government more powerful) won the contest in the Lutheran Circles. They used the Lutheran Church leasders to try to bring all local churches into very close into alignment with Roman Catholic theology of salvation by Baptism.

But Political Freedom and social change had a long way to go in the Germanic lands in the 1700s and 1800s. Universities were given more freedom and accepted as places for intellectual curiosity. Textual Critics took advantage of the situation and used that Freedom to begin attacks on Christianity and the Bible that has continued non-stop even to this day. That curiosity turned into antagonism toward the Bible, led by militant secularists who concluded that the real problem of the world was Christianity.

Soon German Universities were actively working to promote the study of all things designed to undermine Christianity, and this was the movement that came be known as Textual Criticism.

It was this movement that started in the 1700s in Germany and continues today, in the U.S. 

The Bible Societies were very much affected by this [attack the Bible / Attack the Reformation] movement.

Most Bible Translation societies - Today - continue to promote altered and changed modern versions because those societies were overtaken by Textual Criticism.

The result is that those at the decision-making level within the Bible societies, AND certain members of some members of the Translation Teams working to translate FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDITIONS of the New Testament, began to be seduced into advocating false, wrong and alternative translations of certain verses and passages based on false Greek Texts and accepting to substitute those for the Textus Receptus.

There WERE False, Corrupt and ERRANT Printed Versions of Greek New Testaments available in the 1800s to Translators PRIOR to Westcott and Hort.

This is not simply an issue of "alternative" notes, or "alternative" translations of a few passages. It was Entire Printed Versions in Koine Greek taken from Corrupt and Errant manuscripts promoted by those who were hostile and antagonistic to Christianity and the Reformation. (And most of this work - sadly - was promoted by those who remained officially Protestant {though not authentically} ).

The result for Bible Translation has been predictable as well as disastrous. Thanks to continuous tampering and altering of the Word of God, each generation has been afflicted with more and more Bible Versions, that each has contained less and less accurate renderings and translations of the actual Greek Text of the New Testament (as well as more and more watered down and altered content of the Hebrew Old Testament).

Today, many people struggle to find the meaning of the words of the New Testament but have trouble doing so, because the filters that they use to obtain this information [most people not speaking ancient Koine Greek] - namely Modern Versions - are subverted and devoid of much of the very content that they claim to represent.

In other words, in the name of the people, in the name of clarity, Textual Critics disguised as Bible translators have continued the practice of actively working against Christianity, and against the very people in foreign lands they were supposed to be helping

While much of the rank heresy was achieved through the active work in the corrupted Greek New Testament editions of Westcott and Hort, Griesbach, Tischendorf and Nestle 1898 [and his earlier work] (not to mention Kittel), the promotion and transmission of that same heresy has been accomplished through the translation of false Bibles thanks to the Bible Societies that have continued the work of Textual Criticism, better known as the subversion of the Greek (and the Modern Language) text.