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”.

Here is the classic lorem ipsum passage followed by Boparai’s odd, yet mesmerizing version:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam hendrerit nisi sed sollicitudin pellentesque. Nunc posuere purus rhoncus pulvinar aliquam. Ut aliquet tristique nisl vitae volutpat. Nulla aliquet porttitor venenatis. Donec a dui et dui fringilla consectetur id nec massa. Aliquam erat volutpat.”

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It’s 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 hasn’t 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.

McClintock wrote to Before & After to explain his discovery;

“What I find remarkable is that this text has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since some printer in the 1500s took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged except for an occasional ‘ing’ or ‘y’ thrown in.

And anyways, as Cecil Adams reasoned, “[Do you really] think graphic arts supply houses were hiring classics scholars in the 1960s?” Perhaps. But it seems reasonable to imagine that there was a version in use far before the age of Letraset.

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.

It’s 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.

Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed cursus turpis vitae tortor. Donec sodales sagittis magna. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Morbi ac felis. Etiam imperdiet imperdiet orci. Maecenas nec odio et ante tincidunt tempus.Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat…

So far he hasn’t 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.

Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed cursus turpis vitae tortor. Donec sodales sagittis magna. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Morbi ac felis. Etiam imperdiet imperdiet orci. Maecenas nec odio et ante tincidunt tempus.Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat…

Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed cursus turpis vitae tortor. Donec sodales sagittis magna. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Morbi ac felis. Etiam imperdiet imperdiet orci. Maecenas nec odio et ante tincidunt tempus.Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat…

These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted.”

Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed cursus turpis vitae tortor. Donec sodales sagittis magna. Etiam ultricies nisi vel augue. Morbi ac felis. Etiam imperdiet imperdiet orci. Maecenas nec odio et ante tincidunt tempus.Nunc nec neque. Vestibulum ullamcorper mauris at ligula. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam erat volutpat…

The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”