Today, emojis make up a major part of online communication, used by 92% of the online population. But did you know that the meaning of an emoji can get lost in translation?
Emojis can be interpreted differently by their recipient, leaving different impressions with the sender and receiver. In recent years, this has been demonstrated in court cases in the UK, USA and Canada, where legal professionals have had to interpret emojis in evidence, especially where emojis are used to mean something that they don’t necessarily depict e.g. using a maple leaf to stand in for marijuana. In fact, one Canadian judge ruled that a thumbs up emoji was as good as a signature.
When you add cross-cultural communication into the mix, things can get very sticky indeed! For instance, a survey by Slack showed that the peach emoji was interpreted literally by 71% of respondents in Korea, in comparison to the more NSFW meaning in English language emoji-use.
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