【精英翻譯】的部落格

Covid-19’s unlikely victim: new emojis

武漢肺炎不太可能的受害者：新表情符號

精英翻譯社轉自https://features.ltn.com.tw/english/article/paper/1376947

◎黃靖媗

Covid-19 has taken so much from us, but now it’s come for our emojis too.

武漢肺炎從我們身邊帶走許多東西，現在連表情符號也將離我們而去。

As a result of the global pandemic, the Unicode Consortium, which sets standards for digital typography, has been forced to delay the next set of updates, from March 2021 until September 2021.

受全球大流行影響，設立數位排版標準的「統一碼聯盟」（The Unicode Consortium）已經被迫將下次更新，從2021年3月延後到2021年9月。

That will have a knock-on effect for OS at Apple and Google, who will struggle to implement the new designs on their normal timescale. All of which means that 2021 might see no brand new emojis.

這還會連帶影響到蘋果與Google的作業系統，讓它們難以按照正常時間表推出新設計。這一切意味著2021年可能看不到新的表情符號。

That’s more of a hit than it might seem. On an emotional level, the rollout of new emojis is important people who want to represent themselves in the lingua franca of the 21st century. And on a technical level, the pictograms are an important carrot dangled by the smartphone manufacturers to get people to go through the effort of installing software updates, which are crucial to protect users from security vulnerabilities and hacking attacks.

這件事情的影響比表面上更深遠。從情感層面來講，新表情符號的推出，對於想要透過21世紀通用語言展現自我的人們很重要。而在技術層面上，這些符號是智慧型手機廠商懸掛的重要紅蘿蔔，藉此誘使民眾安裝軟體更新，是防止用戶遭遇資安漏洞與駭客攻擊的關鍵。