The Occam Theory of Translation—A Letter from Translatological Editor Trent Slater SpecGram Vol CLXXXIII, No 2 Contents University News

Announcing SGIii SGIII SGI2.0

A Shadowy Cabal of Trans-Hemispheric SpecGram Editors

The far-flung editorial offices of Speculative Grammarian encircle the globe; there is no continent of significance on Planet Earth where the tendrils of our journalistic net fail to put down roots. Therefore, the upcoming Solstice is simultaneously the Winter one and the Summer one for our hard-working editors. That’s a double celebration, and in our books it calls for something as uniquely outstanding as the amazing issue you are now reading.

Some of our readers, though, must not be celebrating either Solstice, as they apparently do not live in either the Northern or the Southern Hemisphere. We’re not sure where they do live, but judging from the comments on our twitter feed, they may well be under the governance of prehistoric water-based Martian life forms.1 You know the ones we meanthey regularly show up in popular journalism’s attempts to explain the significance of this, that, or the other Mars Rovercolorful amoeba-esque creatures that seem oddly shaped, like a smiling human mouth on the verge of uttering galactic wisdom in a lilting interstellar brogue.2

Fortunately, help is now available for those readers. We are happy to announce that as of January 1st, 2019, SpecGram Intern Services, Ltd.6 has launched an entirely new, entirely revolutionary, and entirely remunerative new Internship Platform, which they have artfully named SpecGram Internships 2.0.

Under the SGI2.0 program,7 only persons unconnected with any Hemisphere8 will be enabled to join the exciting team of Speculative Grammarian interns. Career advancement, professional skills development, intense endurance training, emotional hardening, and so much more are available to just about anyone.

If you’d like to nominate a candidate for SGI2.0, contact SpecGram offices today!9



1 Of course this does not include yourself, reader. We refer, of course, to other readers.

2 In case you got lost in that last sentence, which is more or less what we intended, the antecedent of “they” is life forms, not readers.3

3 If you did not get lost in that last sentence, you are a cut above our normal reader for sure.4

4 Who are we kidding? Our “normal” reader is a linguist, and the sets “normal” and “linguist” have been shown to be entirely non-overlapping.5

5 Note for those of our readers not familiar with terminological customs of linguistics: “non-overlapping” means that they do not overlap.

6 SpecGram Intern Services is a legally separate, wholly independent subsidiary with a completely independent Board of Directors and hardly any financial relationship to SpecGram Enterprises whose corporate mission statement is too long to reproduce here, but can be summarized roughly as “help Speculative Grammarian manage its intern workforce.”

7 Previously abbreviated by on-staff classicistswho prefer Roman numerals and know nothing of the dynamic synergy of the <technology> 2.0 memetic structureas SGIii. However, it was too easily confused with the SGIII initiativeAKA SpecGram 3.0which should come to fruition some time after August 2042; details are still hush-hush.

8 “Hemisphere” is used here with either of its two major senses; i.e. denoting equally halves of the earth or brain

9 “Today” refers to the day on which you read this; that is, now.10

10 During the course of normal field testing for this issue, testers discovered that many readers wondered whether “now” could have any meaning at all in this context, since there will undoubtedly be multiple readings by most readers, such that “now” should probably be taken to refer contradictorily to multiple times simultaneously. Is not “now” meaningless if its referent cannot be a single specified time?11 In response to this feedback, the SpecGram editorial board has decided to end its association with the offending testing service, which seems to have wantonly assigned several English majors to this testing job.

11 A rudimentary understanding of deixis and a wee trim from Occam’s Razor should have made everything sufficiently obvious.

The Occam Theory of TranslationA Letter from Translatological Editor Trent Slater
University News
SpecGram Vol CLXXXIII, No 2 Contents