On May 18, in a letter to C. H. Jones, manager of the Pacific Press, W. C. White wrote an enlightening account of what took place in Basel: 3BIO 436.3
At last we are able to send you the corrected copy for the first four chapters of volume 4. About the time that your letter came about resetting it, we were pressing the matter of having it translated into the French and German.... I proposed that the translators and proofreaders of both the French and German, with Brother and Sister Whitney, and Marian and myself, should meet every day, and read, and discuss a chapter. By this means the translators would get the spirit of the work, and would translate better, and the proofreaders, also having a part in this reading, would be prepared to detect the errors in the first reading, instead of the last one, as is often the case now. 3BIO 436.4
We carried the work through, although it cost a great effort. As we read, we found some things that were figurative expressions that were hard to translate, and other things that were easy to be understood by the class of people to whom it was at first thought that the book would go, expressions familiar to Adventists, and those who had heard their preaching, but which must be very blind to the ordinary reader, not especially familiar with religious phrases. 3BIO 436.5
Again, we found parts of the subject that were very briefly treated, because the reader was supposed to be familiar with the subject. Mother has given attention to all of these points, and has thought that the book ought to be so corrected, and enlarged, as to be of the most possible good to the large number of promiscuous readers to whom it is now being offered. And she has taken hold with a remarkable energy to fill in some parts that are rather too brief.—A-2 WCW, p. 245. 3BIO 437.1
In the 1884 book, chapter five, “Early Reformers,” devoted a little more than three pages to the life and work of John Huss and his companion worker, Jerome. This was quite disproportionate to the more than fifty pages that set forth Luther's contribution to the Reformation. It was thought that a chapter, or even two, should be given to Huss and Jerome, and Ellen White set about to provide a sketch of the history. In a hastily handwritten manuscript of eighty-nine pages, drawing heavily on Wylie, she supplied the lack just before she left on her last visit to the northern countries. She left to Marian Davis the task of editing the material for the book and cutting it back to proper length. 3BIO 437.2
W. C. White referred to this expansion of the manuscript and of the reaction to an examination of the text of The Great Controversy from the standpoint of the average non-Adventist reader: 3BIO 437.3
Mother has written enough about Huss and Jerome to make one or two new chapters. She has written something about Zwingli, and may speak of Calvin. The chapter on the two witnesses has been doubled in size, and quite a change will be made in the chapter on William Miller. And some important additions are made to the sanctuary chapter. 3BIO 437.4
In some places more scriptures are introduced, and all the way, more footnote references are used. 3BIO 437.5
You can hardly imagine how differently some things sound when read to sharp, intelligent people, who know they must understand each sentence in order to translate it right, and who are ignorant of the Advent Movement, and experience, than when read where all who hear are familiar with the subject. And as many of the American readers to whom the book will go are nearly as ignorant of the subjects treated and some of them more ignorant than those who read with us, it seemed to us that what needed to be changed in form of expression to make it plain for translation ought to be the same for your new edition.... I think that the additions will swell the work one hundred pages of its present size.— Ibid. 3BIO 437.6
Then White added, “Please have Elders A. T. Jones and E. J. Waggoner [associate editor and editor, respectively, of the Signs of the Times] give careful criticism to the corrections, and to the whole matter.” 3BIO 438.1