The last time I counted, I got 46,812 newsletters in my inbox in a month. You think I’m exaggerating, huh?

You’re right, of course. It’s 36,812 newsletters.

A new one flew into my inbox last week and the writer of this one was too fast with the SEND button. Because the last section looked like this:

You know about lorem ipsum, I’m sure.

The placeholder for future text.

Website and publication designers love it. So do newsletter editors.

I always assumed that it was Latin for “put your text right here when you get a chance.”

Either that, or someone tossed a Latin dictionary into a food processor.

I’d guess the author of the newsletter in question didn’t read my assumed Latin prompt (“Put your text right here…”) because they hadn’t pasted in their own text. Or maybe they pasted in Latin because their people did read Latin?

Except me.

First, I laughed at the newsletter’s scrambled Latin. Then I got curious. (This is one of my fatal flaws.)

What if I offered this lorem ipsum text to Google Translate?

I pasted in the Latin text and Google spit out….the same Latin text.

Google can’t read Latin either?

But as I scrolled through Google’s non-translation, I found that Google had made a last-gasp effort to interpret the final bit.

Here’s what Google Translate came up with:

I now have another reason to read all the way to the end of all newsletters: you never know what disease basketball is about experience.

And I have compassion for the little Google bot who might have been expressing the agony of being forced to translate Latin gibberish. It really might be in a lot of pain.

(Yes, I know lorem ipsum is one of Cicero’s works tossed in a food processor and then spit out as nonsensical dummy text. Just work with me here. Facts do not hold my imagination back.)