Communication challenges and transformations in the Digital Era: emoji language and emoji translation

Abstract The Digital Age has significantly changed how people communicate. Thanks to technology, people have a large variety of communication tools to choose from, such as emails or instant messaging applications, that allows communication to be easier, quicker and, to a certain extent, more efficient. In this technological scenario, emojis play a fundamental role as a kind of universal form of communication. Furthermore, thanks to translation, which acts as a bridge for people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, communication can cross national barriers and spread worldwide. Communication and translation share a common goal that is ‘mutual understanding’. What happens, therefore, when translation meets both technology and emojis in the Digital Age? A new form of communication through translation has emerged, that is emoji translation. The aim of this paper is to show, through a series of examples, how emojis have been recently employed in communication and translation in an attempt to establish whether their use, besides creativity, can be universally accepted and understood worldwide.