The controversy about the shape of the Earth that occurred in France at the beginning of the18th century is an interesting and thought-provoking case of scientific controversy which might interest students of various ages and school levels. The first part contains a quick reminder about the controversy, its context, the main questions at stake and its pedagogical interest. With these ideas in mind, one of us conceived a pedagogical scenario meant for a historical course at middle school level. The workshop was intended to go through the historical material we used for it, for reasons we explain in the second part. In the course of this research, we find out several interesting texts, for which we needed English translations. Looking for the latter confronted us with two unexpected but interrelated challenges: one related to the quality of the translation, the other to the choice of our texts. We present this material and explain the issue in the next part. We conclude with the new ideas that came out of this discussion.