Being a (by-)product of the public school system, I never learned Latin. Now, in most cases, this doesn’t really bother me much, but I ran into a brain twister just yesterday. I am having a small paper published, and the publisher left a sidebar box with some latin placeholder in it. The latin was: <My Name> eum voluptat vullaore con ut e veliquam quamcon eugiat, quis autatum iureetumsan velis nos nit laore consecte feui.
What the heck, I thought, might that mean? Then I remembered the article about latin placeholders in type, and looked that up ([Lorum ipsum](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2290/what-does-the-filler-text-lorem-ipsum-mean)). Of course, that turned out to be a different filler text. This being the wonderful age of the internet, I did a few web searches, and found the rough meanings of each of the different words. Not surprisingly, their meanings seem to be highly contextual, with the possibility of meaning widely disparate things, depending on the context.
I did the best I could, given the time allotted, and came up with the following: ***I, with pleasure, at ordinary effort, dispute how this could be good, by singing a sworn oath, for it is certain to give way to the persuit of filth… *** Now, this is certainly an amusing interpretation, but I’m pretty sure it’s not what it meant. I asked the editor about it, and his words (I quote) were:
“***Sorry about that. That’s just filler text for the box where we normally include the author’s bio. (Is “I, with pleasure...” what it really says in Latin? I had no idea.) Could you provide a brief bio of yourself of about two or three sentence? Usually they include your position, degrees and alma mater, etc.”***
So, he’s as clueless as I am. I always tell my kids not to repeat things they don’t know what they mean, and it seems to me to be a pretty good universal rule. Except, apparently, in the publishing business…
I figure this is a low slow one for those of you who are private school prodigies, or prehaps really old-school puplic-schoolers. Could you please tell me what it means?
I googled portions of that “phrase”, and it inevitably leads to sites where the text is obviously being used as “placeholder” text. None of them had your exact phrase, but used several of the words. Loits of the other words didn’t look like legitimate latin.
My guess is that this is computer-generated placefiller using real latin roots, but not actually meaning anything. They might not even be real words – this looks like the output fromW.R. Bennett’s “infinite monkeys with typewriters” algorithm* for generating real-looking nonsense. By the time you got to third- and fourth-order monkeys, the text based on latin probabilities looked like real latin.
My own Latin is pretty rusty from non-use, and I’m not going to dust it off and get it running for a likely hoax like this.
*American Scientist, Vol. 65, #6, pp. 694-702 Nov-Dec 1977
Lorem ipsum and other placeholders aren’t quite meant to make sense. They’re generally chunks of text from an old speech, but then they’ve been smooshed around quite a bit over the years and are no longer proper Latin at all. It’s just supposed to be really obvious that the text isn’t supposed to stay there. So I’m not sure that you’re going to get a real translation, though you might be able to find the original source text and get the translation of that.
Well, I cerainly do not intend to waste anyone’s time that wasn’t looking to waste it anyways. I can agree that this likely doesn’t make sense, It just seemed like an interesting endeavor to figure out what it might really mean.
I suppose the guy in ancient Rome who was spouting this phrase was likely standing on a streetcorner in rags, spouting othe gobbledygook like “compootur,” “iPod,” etc.
I used to use Quark Xpress page layout software, and it could generate placeholder text for filling in blank text boxes. If I remember correctly, the menu item was called “Jabberwocky”, and it let you choose from gibberish English, Latin or Klingon(!).
Eighteen words, but only seven that exist in Latin. Although, if you want to spitball what it might mean if it did mean anything, why not:
<name> desires him, together use facepalm or I will deliquify with whom he cheers, who the increaseship by law and maybe ever you wish us, try!, by sliced lips I weas.
It is a highly corrupt (garbled) version of the real lorem ipsum. The bit in blue is pretty similar to your text, only actually in Latin. From here.
dolorem ipsum per se esse fugiendum. itaque aiunt hanc quasi naturalem atque insitam in animis nostris inesse notionem, ut alterum esse appetendum, alterum aspernandum sentiamus. Alii autem, quibus ego assentior, cum a philosophis compluribus permulta dicantur, cur nec voluptas in bonis sit numeranda nec in malis dolor, non existimant oportere nimium nos causae confidere, sed et argumentandum et accurate disserendum et rationibus conquisitis de voluptate et dolore disputandum putant. [32] Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur?
I can try. The context—Latin used as a placeholder for typesetting—is the same, so it’s reasonable to look for a relationship with “lorem ipsum.” My theory is that the standard lorem ipsum text (a long block of prose) was copied by someone who knew no Latin, and knew that it wasn’t supposed to convey meaning—i.e. didn’t care about accuracy.
Here is the text from the OP: <My Name> eum voluptat vullaore con ut e veliquam quamcon eugiat, quis autatum iureetumsan velis nos nit laore consecte feui.
eum voluptat vullaore resembles eum voluptate vivere. First word the same, second close and Latin-looking, third gibberish but still v———re. con ut e veliquam resembles contra aliquam, with the bonus that “ut” is a common Latin word, and many other words in the text begin with “veli.” quis autatum iureetusan resumbles quis autem vel eum iure: quis is the same, “autem” has become “autatum,” a Latin-looking word, and the unusal combination iure is repeated, perhaps garbled with recusandae.
I could be wrong, but you certainly won’t find that this represents an actual language, and I doubt if you’d find a closer Latin text. It’s also possible that it was put together by someone who wasn’t copying but going from memory.
I used to know some Latin, although it’s become a bit rusty at this point. I can confirm that it does not seem to be meaningful text, although individual words are certainly Latin.
It looks like “lorem ipsum” text, a chunk arbitrarily taken from the middle of some Latin sentences to be used as space filler. Words seem to have been partly misspelt - probably by someone who just wanted random text, and was not concerned with underlying meaning.
The words *vullaore, iureetumsan, nit, laore and feui *don’t look like Latin. However, if you look at iureetumsan, the first bit looks like iure et which could be two consecutive Latin words pushed together.
Some words may result from a word truncated at the end of one line, and pushed together with a truncated word at the start of the next line. E.g. one line ended with the word puella which has been cut to -la. The next line started with amore which has been cut to -ore. The two pieces of text were pushed together creating laore.
If you cut down a verb like venit, you might end up with nit.
