In 1604, King James I of England authorized that a new translation of the Bible into English be started. It was finished in 1611, just 85 years after the first translation of the New Testament into English appeared (Tyndale, 1526). The Authorized Version, or King James Version, quickly became the standard for English-speaking Protestants. This version of the Bible is in the public domain except in Great Britain, where the British Crown maintains copyright.
The ASV was published in 1901 by Thomas Nelson & Sons. In 1928, the International Council of Religious Education (the body that later merged with the Federal Council of Churches to form the National Council of Churches) acquired the copyright from Nelson and renewed it the following year. This version is in the public domain in the United States.
John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1819 as Classical Medallist. He was ordained as a priest in the established church in Ireland in 1825. In 1827 he came to believe that the church to which he belonged was hopelessly corrupt, so he resigned his position as a clergyman. In Dublin he met Benjamin Wills Newton, who recognized Darby’s gifts and invited him to minister among like-minded people in Plymouth, England. By the year 1832 a congregation was definitely formed there under Darby’s leadership. This was the beginning of the so-called ‘Plymouth Brethren’ movement, to which Darby would devote the rest of his life.
After Darby’s death in 1882, certain of his followers in England produced an English version of the Old Testament based upon Darby’s French and German translations. In 1890 this was published as the Old Testament portion of The Holy Scriptures. A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby (G. Morrish, 1890). This version is now in the public domain.source
The World English Bible is based on the American Standard Version of the Holy Bible first published in 1901, the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensa Old Testament, and the Greek Majority Text New Testament. This version of the Bible is in the public domain
The Webster Bible was translated by Noah Webster in 1833 in order to bring the language of the Bible up to date. This version has made further changes to modernize the language used. This version of the Bible is in the public domain.
The Bible text designated YLT is from the 1898 Young's Literal Translation by Robert Young who also compiled Young's Analytical Concordance. This is an extremely literal translation that attempts to preserve the tense and word usage as found in the original Greek and Hebrew writings. This version of the Bible is in the public domain
As can be seen above we have numerous versions of the Bible in English.
Louis Segond (October 3, 1810 - June 18, 1885), was a Swiss theologian who translated the Bible into French from the original texts in Hebrew and Greek.
The translation of the Old Testament, commissioned by the Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs de Genève, was published in two volumes in 1871 (Meusel has 1874 as the publication date), followed by the New Testament, translated as a private venture, in 1880. The text was then reviewed by experts. The result is the 1910 revision that is now freely available on Internet.
The Reina-Valera Antigua was first translated and published in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina, after twelve years of intensive work, and later put out in 1602 in revised form by Cipriano de Valera, who gave more than twenty years of his life to its revision and improvement. This version is from the 1909 revision, and is considered the Spanish equivalent to the King James Version in English.
German Deutsch Luther Bibel (1545) is a German language Bible translation from Hebrew and ancient Greek by Martin Luther. The New Testament was first published in 1522 and the complete Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha, in 1534. (We have included only the Old and New Testaments here.)
The Statenvertaling (Dutch for States Translation) or Statenbijbel (Dutch for States Bible) is the first Bible translation from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek languages to the Dutch language, ordered by the government of the Protestant Dutch Republic first published in 1637.
The Chinese Union Version (CUV) (Chinese: 和合本; literally: "harmonized/united version") is the predominant translation of the Bible into Chinese used by Chinese Protestants, first published in 1919. The text is now in the public domain.
Because of the old-style and ad hoc punctuation, the CUV looks archaic and somewhat strange to the modern reader. The result of updating the CUV’s punctuation in line with modern usage is the Chinese Union Version with New Punctuation (For example: simplified Chinese: 新标点和合本; traditional Chinese: 新標點和合本; ) which was published in 1988.
Korean Revised Version (개역성경) (KRV) This revision of the Revised Version of the Korean Bible was completed to reflect the new orthography while preserving the translated text. It was revised again in 1961 to further polish the text by applying changes in orthography and word spacing principles.
The organized work of British and Foreign Bible Society in Vietnam began in 1890. The first translation from Greek, and still the standard Protestant Vietnamese version, was that of William Cadman (New Testament 1923, Old Testament 1926).[4] He worked for the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) and co-operated with the British and Foreign Bible Society. The whole Bible was published in 1934 and is published by the Bible Society in Vietnam as the Old Version.
This translation is the popular Van Dyke Version, started in 1847 by Eli Smith and completed by Cornelius Van Allen Van Dyke in Beirut. The New Testament was completed in 1860 and the Old Testament in 1865. It has been widely distributed and accepted by both the Coptic and Protestant churches. The translation was based the Textus Receptus, and follows a literal style of translation into classical Arabic.