Don’t bother typing “lorem ipsum” into Google translate. If you already tried, you may have gotten anything from “NATO” to “China”, depending on how you capitalized the letters. The bizarre translation was fodder for conspiracy theories, but Google has since updated its “lorem ipsum” translation to, boringly enough, “lorem ipsum”. One brave soul did take a stab at translating the almost-not-quite-Latin.
According to The Guardian, Jaspreet Singh Boparai undertook the challenge with the goal of making the text “precisely as incoherent in English as it is in Latin – and to make it incoherent in the same way”. As a result, “the Greek ‘eu’ in Latin became the French ‘bien’ […] and the ‘-ing’ ending in ‘lorem ipsum’ seemed best rendered by an ‘-iendum’ in English.”[/woodmart_text_block][woodmart_image rounding_size=”” woodmart_css_id=”6604300e7745a” img_id=”377″ img_size=”full” display_inline=”no” parallax_scroll=”no” responsive_spacing=”eyJwYXJhbV90eXBlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfcmVzcG9uc2l2ZV9zcGFjaW5nIiwic2VsZWN0b3JfaWQiOiI2NjA0MzAwZTc3NDVhIiwic2hvcnRjb2RlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfaW1hZ2UiLCJkYXRhIjp7InRhYmxldCI6e30sIm1vYmlsZSI6e319fQ==” woodmart_box_shadow=”no” wd_hide_on_desktop=”no” wd_hide_on_tablet=”no” wd_hide_on_mobile=”no”][woodmart_text_block woodmart_css_id=”6606b282ee9e9″ woodmart_inline=”no” responsive_spacing=”eyJwYXJhbV90eXBlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfcmVzcG9uc2l2ZV9zcGFjaW5nIiwic2VsZWN0b3JfaWQiOiI2NjA2YjI4MmVlOWU5Iiwic2hvcnRjb2RlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfdGV4dF9ibG9jayIsImRhdGEiOnsidGFibGV0Ijp7fSwibW9iaWxlIjp7fX19″ parallax_scroll=”no” wd_hide_on_desktop=”no” wd_hide_on_tablet=”no” wd_hide_on_mobile=”no”]
Find Your Focus While Working
As an alternative theory, (and because Latin scholars do this sort of thing) someone tracked down a 1914 Latin edition of De Finibus which challenges McClintock’s 15th century claims and suggests that the dawn of lorem ipsum was as recent as the 20th century. The 1914 Loeb Classical Library Edition ran out of room on page 34 for the Latin phrase “dolorem ipsum” (sorrow in itself). Thus, the truncated phrase leaves one page dangling with “do-”, while another begins with the now ubiquitous “lorem ipsum”.
Whether a medieval typesetter chose to garble a well-known (but non-Biblical—that would have been sacrilegious) text, or whether a quirk in the 1914 Loeb Edition inspired a graphic designer, it’s admittedly an odd way for Cicero to sail into the 21st century.[/woodmart_text_block][woodmart_products columns_tablet=”2″ columns_mobile=”2″ items_per_page=”4″ rounding_size=”” woodmart_css_id=”6604301b1c122″ sale_countdown=”0″ stock_progress_bar=”0″ highlighted_products=”0″ products_bordered_grid=”0″ products_with_background=”1″ products_shadow=”0″ hide_out_of_stock=”no” lazy_loading=”no” responsive_spacing=”eyJwYXJhbV90eXBlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfcmVzcG9uc2l2ZV9zcGFjaW5nIiwic2VsZWN0b3JfaWQiOiI2NjA0MzAxYjFjMTIyIiwic2hvcnRjb2RlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfcHJvZHVjdHMiLCJkYXRhIjp7InRhYmxldCI6e30sIm1vYmlsZSI6e319fQ==” products_background=”eyJkZXZpY2VzIjp7ImRlc2t0b3AiOnsidmFsdWUiOiJyZ2IoMjQ3LDI0NywyNDcpIn19fQ==”][woodmart_text_block woodmart_css_id=”6606b2896c24f” woodmart_inline=”no” responsive_spacing=”eyJwYXJhbV90eXBlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfcmVzcG9uc2l2ZV9zcGFjaW5nIiwic2VsZWN0b3JfaWQiOiI2NjA2YjI4OTZjMjRmIiwic2hvcnRjb2RlIjoid29vZG1hcnRfdGV4dF9ibG9jayIsImRhdGEiOnsidGFibGV0Ijp7fSwibW9iaWxlIjp7fX19″ parallax_scroll=”no” wd_hide_on_desktop=”no” wd_hide_on_tablet=”no” wd_hide_on_mobile=”no”]Second, use lorem ipsum if you think the placeholder text will be too distracting. For specific projects, collaboration between copywriters and designers may be best, however, like Karen McGrane said, draft copy has a way of turning any meeting about layout decisions into a discussion about word choice. So don’t be afraid to use lorem ipsum to keep everyone focused.
One word of caution: make sure your client knows that lorem ipsum is filler text. You don’t want them wondering why you filled their website with a foreign language, and you certainly don’t want anyone prematurely publishing it.[/woodmart_text_block]