Lipsum

I first saw Lipsum in the seventies when I frequented a printing business Somerset Press in Somerset West to discuss our printing requirements for paint can labels with the typesetter fellow. It appeared on many pages of the sales manual those particular printers used in showing me samples of what I could expect from a particular printing layout proposal.

Since then, it has become fairly commonly known to users of computer documents, publishing apps, etc and is also known as “Greeking” after the original Greek author Cicero in his De finibus bonorum et malorum (On good and evil ends).

To anyone reading the text, it appears to be a jumbled mumbo-jumbo mish-mash on text such as, for example:  “hdshcfuihviubn ejcuwe ceu sucbuich uchiu cbubh kbcu hbcusu bcbcue ubcued jbucbde cbudbc jbcusici  etc etc”

But instead, it has become a fairly standardised international practice to use an excerpt from Cicero, like the sentences in green below. I wrote it using an app called Lipsum.Pro which automatically generated any number of words, sentences or paragraphs as instructed by the user…(me):

“Facilisis ut nunc quisque nulla vitae interdum convallis enim justo porta lacus diam suspendisse proin adipiscing curae mus justo. Dui consectetur aliquam cursus neque cras placerat mauris dui a tellus ad parturient sociis at magnis ullamcorper lacus ad.”

which translates to the English equivalent of: “Antioxidants may now everyone is just no life and times of the valley gate leakage platform to suspend them then we just take care of the customer . Funny some kind of a real estate course nor tomorrow but with great notebook to his companions at the lakes..”

Interestingly (or not), the reverse translation of the English translation back to the Latin gives me: “Facilisis quisque nunc lacus sit amet nulla porta convallis vitae interdum iustus tunc curae suspendisse adipiscing. Dui consectetur dui a tellus mauris aliquam cursus placerat neque cras , sed magna at lacus, ullamcorper in , parturient non , ad comites sic ad..”

Direct translations of this sort are usually difficult in that sequence and syntax are generally different, verbs being placed at the end of a sentence and adjectives after the noun. Translating and “she threw the ball” becomes “she the ball threw” and “a big tree” gives “a tree big” (compare: Afrik. “sy het die bal gegooi”.)

Pretty damn’ good, for my 50-year-old Latin memory, I would say.

As I write this garbage, I am sitting in our “sitting room” in the extension where I can keep an eye on the weather, which I would describe currently as a veritable downpour, with regular gale-force gusts. This is the reason for me not doing some garden fence prep work… The electricity supply has been failing intermittently now about twenty times in the last half hour, so connection to the internet to get translations and to publish this post has been a bit awkward…