With emojis increasingly showing up in everything from ad campaigns to legal cases, a clear understanding of what the symbols mean — especially across different cultures — has become an in-demand skill. So much so that last year, global firm Today Translations placed an ad for the position of “emoji translator.”
Following a months-long application process that included emoji tests and the drafting of an emoji handbook, the position was given to Irishman Keith Broni.
His qualifications encompass far more than frequent texting. Broni just completed his master’s in business psychology at University College London, where his dissertation was on “the influence that emojis can have in digital context when brands are using them to communicate with potential consumers.”
VICE News spoke to Broni about what exactly an emoji translator does, the problems that can arise when brands use emojis, and how to manage the ever-changing definitions of emojis and their varying uses across cultures.
Comments about this article
Brazilië
Duits naar Portugees
+ ...
One tends to think that pictures don´t need a special translation, specially in an image oriented time as ours.
Seems the start of a new speciallity. The problem of the emoji translator is that he is limited to texts that use emojis. And emojis are very much "in" today, but they may easily be replaced by something else tomorrow.
Duitsland
Local time: 15:40
Engels naar Arabisch
+ ...
MODERATOR
How knows, it might be the major language in the future 😃
Local time: 15:40
Lid 2006
Spaans naar Nederlands
+ ...
When Emoji's are the new way of communicating, as presented in the video, then the old Egyptians already used them, only then they were called hierglyphics. So actually, nothing new under the sun.
Italië
Local time: 15:40
Lid 2008
Engels naar Italiaans
+ ...
So we use emojis instead of words, and now we need some dude to turn them back into words.
Verenigde Staten
Local time: 09:40
Lid 2005
Engels naar Chinees
+ ...
[Edited at 2017-11-18 12:21 GMT]
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