So how did the classical Latin become so incoherent? According to McClintock, a 15th century typesetter likely scrambled part of Ciceroâs De Finibus in order to provide placeholder text to mockup various fonts for a type specimen book. Itâs difficult to find examples of lorem ipsum in use before Letraset made it popular as a dummy text in the 1960s, although McClintock says he remembers coming across the lorem ipsum passage in a book of old metal type samples. So far he hasnât relocated where he once saw the passage, but the popularity of Cicero in the 15th century supports the theory that the filler text has been used for centuries.
Donât bother typing âlorem ipsumâ into Google translate. If you already tried, you may have gotten anything from âNATOâ to âChinaâ, depending on how you capitalized the letters. The bizarre translation was fodder for conspiracy theories, but Google has since updated its âlorem ipsumâ translation to, boringly enough, âlorem ipsumâ. 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 âprecisely as incoherent in English as it is in Latin â and to make it incoherent in the same wayâ. As a result, âthe Greek âeuâ in Latin became the French âbienâ [âŠ] and the â-ingâ ending in âlorem ipsumâ seemed best rendered by an â-iendumâ in English.â
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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 McClintockâs 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 âdolorem ipsumâ (sorrow in itself). Thus, the truncated phrase leaves one page dangling with âdo-â, while another begins with the now ubiquitous âlorem ipsumâ.
Whether a medieval typesetter chose to garble a well-known (but non-Biblicalâthat would have been sacrilegious) text, or whether a quirk in the 1914 Loeb Edition inspired a graphic designer, itâs admittedly an odd way for Cicero to sail into the 21st century.
