For the unaware, the emoji differs from emoticons, the little pictures made from punctuation marks like 🙂 or ;-). Like emoticons, emojis can be used to indicate tone or emotion in messages composed largely of text. Some software can even replace an emoticon with the proper emoji when a new paragraph is started or the communication is sent.
Pictures depicting emotion or culture were common in many civilizations. Hieroglyphics that were discovered on cave or pyramid walls, for example, told us much about what was going on thousands of years ago before language was legitimized.
According to the freelance job posted in London, the emoji specialist will be expected to provide translation work for clients and write monthly reports “on emoji trends, developments, usage and areas of confusion and cultural differences.” One client already wants to translate his diary into emojis for his children.
The value of the emoji isn’t new. Oxford Dictionaries named an emoji its word of the year in 2015 selecting the laughing/crying face as an example. As world communication becomes more focused on visuals or 140 character texts “it’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill the gaps,” said Oxford Dictionaries’ president Casper Grathwohl at the time. In some countries, like Great Britain and parts of Asia, the emoji is the fastest-growing language.