Lorem Ipsum- Secret Codes!?

[magicyte]

Okay, so I got a little bored today :D. I decided to take randomly generated lorem ipsum text and translate it via BabelFish ( http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ )

I had entered this using the 'Dummy Lipsum' addon in FireFox:


In eu odio. Aliquam ut dui. Nunc nunc enim, commodo id, fringilla sit amet, lacinia eget, diam. In hac habitasse nullam.

After I entered it, I chose to translate it from Spanish into English (because Spanish, in my mind, is close to Latin and Latin is the basis of lorem ipsum text, so I heard). This was the result:


In the USA hatred. Aliquam ut dui. Nunc nunc enim, commodo you go, fringilla sit amet, lacinia eget, diam. In beam habitasse nullam.

In the USA hatred. That was quite interesting to me. I also translated it from Portuguese into English and came up with this:


In I hatred. Aliquam ut dui. Nunc nunc enim, commodo id, fringilla sit amet, lacinia eget, diam. In hac inhabited nullam.

In I hatred. In...inhabited. Weird, huh.

Totally freaked me out. Basically, I guess it was saying "where I live, there is hatred". What do you think of these secret codes, and what do you think of the translation's outcome?

[Schmoopy]

I study Spanish,

En in spanish is "in".
Odio can mean "I hate" or "el odio" which means (the) hatred.

Not sure how it got USA, but it's "Los Estados Unidos", so maybe "EU" was short for it :)

[Snookerman]

The Latin translation of that is upon good to hate:
http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&type=text&text=In+eu+odio.&from=ltt&to=eng (http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&type=text&text=In+eu+odio.&from=ltt&to=eng)

[Master_script_maker]

Also, many words may only be parts of words: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2290/what-does-the-filler-text-lorem-ipsum-mean

[Medyman]

H. Rackham's 1914 translation (with major source of Lorem Ipsum highlighted):

[32] But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
[33] On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled 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. 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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum#English_translation

[molendijk]

It's a pity that schools don't teach Latin anymore (many languages have plenty of words having a Latin origin), and that there's no Google translation-aid for Latin. Going back to school won't be much of a help in these modern times.
Medyman, I don't see the English equivalent of in eu odio in your hightlighted text. As far as I can tell, 'odio' means 'I hate' (from 'odire': to hate, cf. English 'odious') or 'hatred', and 'eu' means 'bravo'. 'Odire in + X' could mean 'hate X' / have feelings of hatred towards X' (where 'towards' corresponds with 'in'), but that would yield nothing ('I hate bravo'). So perhaps 'eu' is some form of a personal pronoun (ablativus: 'him'/'it'?), which would result in 'I hate him/it'.
===
Arie.

[Schmoopy]

As I said before, EU could translate as an abbreviation for "Estados Unidos" in Spanish, but since many languages were derived from Latin, there could be a mixture in there.

Latin was taught at my old school, and it was rumored to be the hardest GCSE to take. Some people think it's a pointless language to learn, but I've seen that people who know Latin can often figure out the meaning of words in Italian, Spanish and other languages, because they know the word in Latin and can see how it's morphed to fit that language. It's a great language to start with, and then you can easily branch off into other languages with an already solid foundation with some of the vocabulary.

[molendijk]

If 'eu' is an abbreviation of 'Estados Unidos' (odd, in a Latin text!; at that time, the world was ruled by Rome, not by Washington)), then we would get 'I hate the United States'.

Schmoopy, I agree with you that Latin is not a pointless language. In particular, it learns us how to decompose sentences (into smaller units) in which words are often combinations of all sorts of differents 'word classes'. So 'to it' would be one word, 'in it', another word (with the same 'stem' of course), etc. Something similar to what we find in a language like Russian.

No language is pointless, of course.
===
Arie.

[Schmoopy]

Except maybe Basque... and Welsh haha!

But no, Basque is cool... (I don't want the ETA coming to my house :o)

Edit:

Here's some welsh for you (you'll see how utterly strange it is if you haven't seen much of it before)

Cymraeg: Arwydd ffordd dwyieithog yn Sgwâr Callaghan, Caerdydd

English: Bilingual road sign in Callaghan Square, Cardiff, 2005-07. Copyright © Kaihsu Tai

[molendijk]

Except maybe Basque... and Welsh haha!
How about Frisian (old but very much alive language used by Frisians, province of 'Frieland', Holland).

I don't want the ETA coming to my house
Nor the 'Rote Armee Fraktion' (West Germany, before the Soviet Union collapsed), but that army is as dead as a doornail now. So is Charles Dickens.

Here's some welsh for you (you'll see how utterly strange it is if you haven't seen much of it before)
Cymraeg: Arwydd ffordd dwyieithog yn Sgwâr Callaghan, Caerdydd
English: Bilingual road sign in Callaghan Square, Cardiff, 2005-07. Copyright © Kaihsu Tai
That sounds very guttural to me! Somehow it makes me think of Frisian.
===
Arie.

[Twey]

That sounds very guttural to me! Somehow it makes me think of Frisian.Actually, it isn't — the secret is that half the letters that appear to be consonants to an English-speaker are actually vowels. :)

w = [ʊ] or [u], like in English 'book' or 'boot'
y = some vowel that's kind of like [ə] but has a whole bunch of different, similar pronunciations
dd = [ð], the 'th' in 'that' (as opposed to [θ], the 'th' in 'thing')
ff = [f] like in 'fish' (single 'f' is [v] as in 'vile')

It's actually a lot less weird than English — it's a pretty regular language.


because Spanish, in my mind, is close to Latin...


In the USA hatredWe needed a 'secret code' to tell us that?

[magicyte]

We needed a 'secret code' to tell us that?

Heck no! Scratch 'secret code'- replace it with 'international news' :p

[djr33]

The text is nonsense. Spanish is closer to English than it is to Latin.... don't worry about it...

[Schmoopy]

You mean Latin is closer to English? :p

[Snookerman]

Or maybe Spanish is closer to English than it is to Latin?

[Twey]

The latter, I suspect — Spanish is more similar to Latin than English is, but that's about as far as it goes.

[Schmoopy]

I would agree that Spanish is quite close to English in some parts of the language, as you can see in this example:

All words in English that end in "ion" are exactly the same in Spanish, albeit with an accent and the t changes to a c.

Spanish

Information -> Información
Description -> Descripción
Distraction -> Distracción
etc...

I'd say its easier to tell what these words mean in English than from the Latin equivalents:

Latin

Information -> Notitia (Maybe this is where "noticias" comes from in Spanish, meaning "news")
Description -> genus
Distraction -> distraho

Obviously there are words in Spanish that can't be directly related to the English but as I've studied Spanish I've seen many similarities in words and since I don't know much about Latin I probably have a biased view. All in all I'd say it was easier to deduct the English meaning from Spanish words than it is Latin words.

[Twey]

Information -> Notitia (Maybe this is where "noticias" comes from in Spanish, meaning "news")Think 'notice'.


Description -> genusThis is actually an English word too.


Distraction -> distrahoIt's easy to see how /h/ could become /kʃ/. Counting that as a single phoneme, as it basically is in the -tion ending (hence the non-standard pronunciation), it's only Levenshtein 2 away from the Latin word.

The reason that much modern English and Spanish vocabulary is similar is that they are both influenced by Latin. Any similarity in the modern forms that is not present in the Latin is by and large coincidental, although there has been some direct interaction between the two since then. Grammatically, however, English is mostly Germanic, while Spanish is quite similar to Latin (although considerably simplified and somewhat less regular); for example, 'I love' is 'amo' in both Latin and Spanish.

It's still not nearly close enough to be classed as 'similar', though.

[djr33]

Sorry for the odd phrasing--
I meant to say:
"Spanish is closer to English than [Latin] is to Spanish", or just that english and spanish are more similar than either is to Latin.

Vocabulary aside, Spanish has very little (in terms of automated translation) to do with Latin and much of the vocab differs enough that it would be wrong anyway, just as much as it would be with the english.

Latin grammar is so varied from Spanish that a fluent speaker of Spanish given a dictionary of Latin, with no training/experience, would probably have no idea what is being said in Latin (at least in relatively complex sentences).
Vocab is helpful, sure, but when the grammar of the language allows complete freedom of word order (any word can be any place in the sentence, like "the nice people are here" might come out as "nice here people are", or "people nice here are" and it would be completely comprehensible in Latin without even sounding funny), then it's just not going to come through a translator with any sense. (when that translator isn't looking for freedom of word order at least)

[jscheuer1]

Forget Lorem Ipsum (ever try spell-checking it?) - if translated it's dry and depressing - if not, to most people it looks like nonsense. Why not use 'Lorem' Lib Some (http://home.comcast.net/~jscheuer1/side/lib_some.htm)? It's nonsense that anyone familiar with the English language can understand.

[Snookerman]

to most people it looks like nonsense
Isn't that kind of the point? That you can look at the text design without being distracted by the words themselves.

[jscheuer1]

Isn't that kind of the point? That you can look at the text design without being distracted by the words themselves.

IDK, I like it to at least be legible. Believe me, 'Lorem Lib Some' will not distract you, unless you let it, at which point it can become quite addictive. It's for fun, but it also gives you an idea of what the design would be like with real words. There are things you cannot tell about a layout, or that at least might be easy to miss if you can't read it anyway.

CTSOBI :)

[molendijk]

The text isn't perhaps entirely nonsense. Anyhow, odire in exists in Latin ('have feelings of hatred towards'). And eu might be a 'vulgar' (in the sense of 'vulgar Latin': popular dialect) form of eō or of eum ('him'), since in vulgar Latin the final /m/ as well as the distinction between /u/ and /o/ tend to disappear. So we end up with I hate him.
===
Arie.

[djr33]

Not really. That sentence says "in - 'him' - I hate", maybe. But that's not the way it would be written in Latin anyway. In takes the accusative or dative, but hate wouldn't use a preposition. And this all assumes that "eu" is for some reason an odd form of "is ea id".

Now if you're bored enough, maybe you should record the entire text and play it backwards... maybe that'll get somewhere. :p

[molendijk]

Not really. That sentence says "in - 'him' - I hate", maybe. But that's not the way it would be written in Latin anyway.
Not in classical Latin, but in vulgar Latin: yes, see below



It takes the accusative or dative, but hate wouldn't use a preposition.
Or it takes the ablativus. And it tends more and more to take a preposition in vulgar Latin, see also here (http://www.windofkeltia.com/quicklang/latin/prep.html).



And this all assumes that "eu" is for some reason an odd form of "is ea id".
The accusative of 'is' is 'eum', the ablativus is 'eo'. Given the fact that the final 'm' disappears in vulgar Latin (i.e. rosam --> rosa(m) --> rosa --> rose (French)), and also given the confusion of: 'u' or 'o'?, my assumption about 'eu' isn't that illogical.



Now if you're bored enough, maybe you should record the entire text and play it backwards... maybe that'll get somewhere. :p
As soon as I have the time!
===
Arie.

[jscheuer1]

There is a more or less 'official' translation:

http://www.lipsum.com/

But that specific passage isn't covered. Odio is translated there as 'dislike'.