Today in “best job ever news,” you can get paid to translate emojis
Have you ever hemmed and hawed about whether to send the heart eyes emoji to a potential suitor? Or have you ended a flirtatious string of texts after receiving a eggplant emoji way too early in the conversation? Do you know all the vegetable emojis by name — including that weird purply-yellow one that looks like half a yam? Then we know the perfect career for you.
The London-based company Today Translations will actually pay you to translate emojis. Can you say “best job ever?” CEO of Today Translations, Jurga Zilinskiene, told the BBC that they are offering the position after a client asked the firm to translate a diary from English to emoji.
Honestly, who would have thought?
According to the BBC, whoever fills the position will have to explain the “cross-cultural misunderstandings in the use of the mini pictures, and compiling a monthly trends report.” Perhaps the eggplant emoji means something completely different over in Russia than it does here in the United States — who knows?
Zilinkiene said that over 30 people have applied to the position so far, and is hoping to hire a freelance emoji translator by the beginning of 2017. If you want this job, you better apply sooner than later.
The application process requires that you take an online test to prove that you know your emojis like the back of your hand. The test presents you with a set of emojis, and the taker must translate to English what the emojis say. Why didn’t our high school offer this kind of test instead of French exams?!
The BBC asked Dr. Rob Drummond, senior lecturer in linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, if emojis can now be considered a separate language. The answer? No. Dr. Drummond categorizes emojis as “an addition to language rather than a language itself.” So don’t go around calling yourself a multi-linguist just yet.
However, Dr. Drummond did say that he sees the need for emoji specialists in the legal world. Emojis add underlying meaning to text messages, and specialists in that realm would be useful in court, similar to behavioral specialists. So don’t write off emojis as the stilly stuff of teens; they can have massive impact.
