Is The king James version losing influence?

[prudent_commenter]

I don't think it's influence will decrease. If anything the demand will rise, but they won't print it anymore.

If you know the English language well, you'll have no problem with the KJV. These newer translations all stem from one problem of which they are all trying to fix: ease of understanding. And while they do that, they also need to be in line with the times (otherwise they will not be able to publish, and make money from).

There is no valid reason to which a doctrine needs to be revised every few years, which is what most of the translations are providing. The KJV for instance, has no revisions, but editions. These other translations have many revisions. Many changes in words, thousands of them, with no rationale behind. To me, this like a race between how modifies what and when.
And the language used in modern translations seem mild, political-speech perhaps? It's not readily apparent, but you do see it. One thing that I dislike the removal of fasting in verses Mark 9:29, Matthew 17:21, 1 Corinthians 7:5. Plus other inconsistencies.

 

[The Liturgist]

I travel quite a bit and the versions I see the most are ESV. I don't recall seeing a KJV recently, but I have seen NKJV too.

Apparently the ESV replaced the NKJV for many Gideons, but in the Western US the Gideons in Southern California (at least, the Inland Empire), Arizona and Nevada and Utah mainly use the KJV.

The Gideons International consists of local chapters and regional organizations, so perhaps this decision is made at the chapter or regional level.

When I worked in West Africa the Gideon’s Bible in my guest house was an NiV, (it featured introductory text for each chapter as well and was quite nice), it was also larger than those in the US, Quarto rather than Octavo sized.

 

[The Liturgist]

I don't think it's influence will decrease. If anything the demand will rise, but they won't print it anymore.

If you know the English language well, you'll have no problem with the KJV. These newer translations all stem from one problem of which they are all trying to fix: ease of understanding. And while they do that, they also need to be in line with the times (otherwise they will not be able to publish, and make money from).

There is no valid reason to which a doctrine needs to be revised every few years, which is what most of the translations are providing. The KJV for instance, has no revisions, but editions. These other translations have many revisions. Many changes in words, thousands of them, with no rationale behind. To me, this like a race between how modifies what and when.
And the language used in modern translations seem mild, political-speech perhaps? It's not readily apparent, but you do see it. One thing that I dislike the removal of fasting in verses Mark 9:29, Matthew 17:21, 1 Corinthians 7:5. Plus other inconsistencies.

This is an extremely important point. The Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East still primarily use the Peshitta, a fourth century translation of the Bible into the Syriac dialect of Aramaic.

The main reason for the continual revisions of the NIV, NRSV and so on is obviously revenue generation, since Zondervan, ThomasNelson etc. want to sell more Bibles.

Likewise the reason why most KJVs are incomplete, lacking the Deuterocanonical books the Anglicans called the Apocrypha, but not in the pejorative sense the early church Fathers used the term, but rather more like Antilegomenna in a Lutheran context, is to save money on printing costs (and also these days to avoid alienating non-Anglican Protestants who on seeing a full KJV might incorrectly assume it was a Roman Catholic Bible, but historically, in the late 18th and 19th century when the elimination of the deuterocanonical books became the norm, most people knew the KJV had them, and some Calvinists still privately held to the Geneva Bible.