The Vetus Latina translation long predated the Vulgate. The Vetus Latina Old Testament was heavily dependent on the Greek Septuagint and was the Bible to which St. Augustine was accustomed. St. Jerome translated the Old Testament from Hebrew texts.
The Douay Old Trestament was written prior to Authorized Version under King James I but after Henry VIII's Great Bible upon which the Douay was dependent. The Authorized Version was influenced by the Douay Old Testament. Richard Challoner's revision of both the Douay Old Testament and Rheims New Testament was influenced by the Authorized Version. Both the Anglican Authorized Version (that contained the whole Catholic canon) and the Catholic Douay-Rheims Version (the original, not the later Challoner revision) opposed the Calvinist Geneva Bible.
Interesting comments about the Challoner Douay-Rheims. Here's more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay%E2%80%93Rheims_BibleWhen explaining the DRV to non-Catholics, I use the shorthand of referring to it as "kind of like a Catholic King James", taking pains to explain that it does not come from the KJV, but that it has pretty much the same "look and feel", and is preferred by traditional Catholics, the same way that more traditional evangelicals prefer the KJV. I read the entire DRV, word-for-word, while I was in college, slowly, taking notes, took me almost four years, just a chapter or two a day. I have also read the entire KJV NT (and much of the OT) word-for-word, for comparison purposes. The two main differences are that where the DRV says "do penance", the KJV says "repent", and where the DRV says "priests" (in the NT), the KJV says "elders". There is also 1st Corinthians 7:9, where the DRV says "
do not contain", but the KJV says "
cannot contain" where referring to whether one should marry or not. That is a crucial difference. The DRV makes reference to a situation of fact, whereas the KJV makes it sound as though marriage is a "rescue boat" for those troubled by concupiscence with no other way to satisfy it, that is not sinful. IOW, "get married so you won't burn with passion that you can't gratify".
Along these lines, what are some other recommended English translations for traditional Catholics? The Knox translation is just, well,
weird. Not heterodox, just weird and jarring, evidently because it's in a style that I'm not used to. From time to time, I use either the New English Bible or the NRSV Catholic edition, though not the NAB, never, ever the NAB. Any others?
Learning Latin enough to read the Vulgate (which I also have in a cloth-bound edition published in Spain) is always an option.