This process involved not only the transposition of Joan’s direct responses into indirect speech and of her French idioms into the Latin of juridical protocol but also deliberate falsification of some of her answers in such a way as to justify her condemnation (this was revealed at the retrial twenty-five years after her death).(1) Yet these many layers of official distance separating us from what Joan said are just an aftereffect of the one big original distance that separates Joan herself from her sentences.
Carson points out how even in Ancient Times, the language barrier was a gigantic issue in public affairs. Even though Joan could have been innocent in what she was saying, the translators for Latin bended her words in translation to make it seem like she was guilty which evidently led to her death. Not only does it show an injustice in the system, it shows how it alters the facts and what was actually said which can throw historians off in discovering the actual trial facts. It's honestly quite amazing how different regions of the world can come up with their own languages and come together to figure out how to translate each and what word is associated with which in the other. With the fact that there is deliberate falsifications with translation, will this make historians question the credibility of many primary sources?