You can't make such a claim. For example, Venerable Bede translated the Bible into English's ancestor language, Anglo-Saxon, in the middle of the first millenium, not long after the British Isles had been converted!
It is reported that Bede translated a portion of the Gospel of John. No record of the translation or how it was used survives.
That is hardly an inspiring story if one wants to assert the RC concerns for getting the Bible to the people.
John Wycliffe, a Roman Catholic, translated the entire Bible from the Vulgate into English. His reward? He was condemned as a heretic and expelled from his position at Oxford and after he died the pope had his bones exhumed and burned.