Trump Stone Ancient Texts Get a Partial Translation at Last

Scholars at Harvard III University (New Earth) have announced what they are calling a preliminary breakthrough in the decipherment of the Trump Stone ancient texts, a set of messages inscribed on magnetic media and recovered from an underwater excavation site on Old Earth. The announcement was made at a press conference this morning by Professor Rock E. Raccoon, who was careful to characterise the results as incomplete, but expressed ‘very strong’ confidence in the partial translations his team has produced so far.

The Trump Stone was recovered alongside other relics from a structure initially believed to have functioned as a prison, given what excavation reports described as the shoddiness of its construction and its indifference to aesthetics. Revised scholarly opinion now holds that the building served as ordinary housing, and that its vulgar decor was simply a characteristic of the epoch rather than evidence of punitive conditions.

The Trump Stone Ancient Texts and the Civilisation They Reveal

The inhabitants of this structure, according to the prevailing academic consensus, were likely small-brained, morbidly obese early humans featuring bright orange skin and straw-coloured synthetic hair. They have been designated ‘Trumps’ by researchers, a name derived from the inscription ‘Trump Tower’ found on a large plasticine stele near the underwater excavation site. For years, the obscure and apparently often incoherent dialect inscribed on the Trump Stone resisted all attempts at translation.

Much like the Rosetta Stone, the Trump Stone offers two versions of the same text: one in standard binary, and the other in a demotic language referred to as ‘AI.’ Despite this structural advantage, progress remained elusive. The breakthrough only arrived with the unearthing of a companion artefact at Temple X, now known as the Musk Stone, which provided the comparative basis for Professor Raccoon’s team to advance their analysis.

‘We are pleased to announce today the preliminary results of our comparison of the Trump and Musk Stones,’ Professor Raccoon said at the press conference. ‘These results, while incomplete and certainly not fully understood, nevertheless advance our understanding of post-Cheesecake Factory civilisation on Old Earth far beyond what we have been able to deduce previously.’

The team is still grappling with what Raccoon described as ‘religious and culinary jargon’ on both stones. A sample translation offered at the conference places the two texts side by side. The Trump Stone reads: ‘Open the fuckin strait you crazy bastards.’ The Musk Stone’s corresponding passage is rendered as: ‘Poop emoji, crying laughing emoji.’ Brief and, in their own way, urgent.

Interpreting the Musk Stone’s Emotional Register

Scholars have offered provisional readings of each passage. The author of the Musk Stone, Raccoon’s team suggests, may have been expressing deep grief at the loss of someone or something close, possibly a trained mammal not unlike a walrus, which were reportedly kept as pets in even less-affluent households under the Apple oligarchs. The Trump Stone’s reference to a ‘strait’ that is not ‘open,’ and the subsequent appeal to ‘crazy bastards,’ has been tentatively linked to practices of the Idiots of Grunge, who were known to anthropomorphise guitar pedals.

The question of the Trumps’ cultural sophistication remains open. Scholars are divided on whether this primitive warlike tribe would have properly venerated the Who as prophets of rock society, or adopted instead the Beatle nomenclature system. Present-day New Earth civilisation, guided by the collected sayings of Lennon and McCartney, regards silly love songs as the highest form of art; the Trumps, by contrast, appear to have been, in Raccoon’s framing, ‘a bunch of real nowhere men.’ The exact number of genders among the Trumps remains a matter of ongoing scholarly debate.

As for the term ‘poop,’ experts have yet to reach consensus. The best current hypothesis is that it refers to a kind of shellfish. Probably delicious. Further excavation at Temple X is expected to continue.