Text Me, Ishmael
March 1, 2014 12:51 PM Subscribe
Although Moby-Dick is regarded as a pinnacle of American Romanticism, its themes of destiny and defiance transcend national borders. Over the decades, the Library of Congress has procured editions translated into Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Lithuanian. But the latest translation eschews the written word altogether, telling the story through emoji icons—the pictograms seen in text messages and e-mails. It’s the most ambitious (and playful) effort to explore whether emoji itself is becoming a free-standing language.
The only link I was able to find any actual emoji on was the wikipedia one. Color me disappoint.
posted by aubilenon at 12:59 PM on March 1, 2014
posted by aubilenon at 12:59 PM on March 1, 2014
🍆
posted by Wolfdog at 12:59 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Wolfdog at 12:59 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
Nope, there aren't any excerpts at the Smithsonian link.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:59 PM on March 1, 2014
posted by ocherdraco at 12:59 PM on March 1, 2014
I guess this is the appropriate place to drop these links: Classical art with emoji. Goya. Modigliani.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:00 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by benito.strauss at 1:00 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."
Or, alternatively:
🚣 🔪 🐳
posted by mhoye at 1:02 PM on March 1, 2014 [18 favorites]
Or, alternatively:
🚣 🔪 🐳
posted by mhoye at 1:02 PM on March 1, 2014 [18 favorites]
Here's a image of a wee bit of the text. Apologies for the broken link. [Thanks jessamyn!]
posted by chavenet at 1:13 PM on March 1, 2014
posted by chavenet at 1:13 PM on March 1, 2014
Kickstarter has its downside after all.
posted by Segundus at 1:23 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Segundus at 1:23 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
When did smilies become... emo...juju...cons?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:26 PM on March 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:26 PM on March 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
When Apple made them a proprietary property of its operating system instead of a user created glyph.
posted by codacorolla at 1:30 PM on March 1, 2014
posted by codacorolla at 1:30 PM on March 1, 2014
I'm old. I don't get it at all. Like I can't make the connection to the icons from the text.
I do lack the art understanding portion of my brain to make connections it seems. Like I enjoy pictures of things that look like the things they are pictures of. Maybe that's the problem.
posted by Lord_Pall at 1:36 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
I do lack the art understanding portion of my brain to make connections it seems. Like I enjoy pictures of things that look like the things they are pictures of. Maybe that's the problem.
posted by Lord_Pall at 1:36 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
Should I be seeing something other than squares in the comments by yoink, mhoye, and wolfdog? Am I missing a font?
posted by General Tonic at 1:39 PM on March 1, 2014
posted by General Tonic at 1:39 PM on March 1, 2014
It's hip to see squares.
posted by yoink at 1:41 PM on March 1, 2014 [14 favorites]
posted by yoink at 1:41 PM on March 1, 2014 [14 favorites]
Should I be seeing something other than squares in the comments by yoink, mhoye, and wolfdog? Am I missing a font?
You should be seeing a set of unicode characters like this one. Unfortunately, I have no good explanation for why some browsers handle certain unicode characters and others don't. For instance, I see them all rendered correctly except for the first one in mhoye's comment, which comes up as a square.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:45 PM on March 1, 2014
You should be seeing a set of unicode characters like this one. Unfortunately, I have no good explanation for why some browsers handle certain unicode characters and others don't. For instance, I see them all rendered correctly except for the first one in mhoye's comment, which comes up as a square.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:45 PM on March 1, 2014
From Chavenet's link:
"Oh, wait, the language, though only in its infancy, has already produced a masterpiece. Fred Benenson’s “Emoji Dick” is an epic translation of Herman Melville’s 200,000-word classic, “Moby Dick” into emoji. Not to be frowned upon, it’s now, been inducted into the Library of Congress’ catalog"
I do not think masterpiece means what this person thinks it does (not saying you couldn't write one in emoji, but this...well, I don't think its going to take its place among the great translations of the world). And the fact that something got put into the Library of Congress' catalog is not a sign of quality or even success: the Library's job is gather information in a range of forms and act as a repository, not to pass judge on what is produced.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 1:47 PM on March 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
"Oh, wait, the language, though only in its infancy, has already produced a masterpiece. Fred Benenson’s “Emoji Dick” is an epic translation of Herman Melville’s 200,000-word classic, “Moby Dick” into emoji. Not to be frowned upon, it’s now, been inducted into the Library of Congress’ catalog"
I do not think masterpiece means what this person thinks it does (not saying you couldn't write one in emoji, but this...well, I don't think its going to take its place among the great translations of the world). And the fact that something got put into the Library of Congress' catalog is not a sign of quality or even success: the Library's job is gather information in a range of forms and act as a repository, not to pass judge on what is produced.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 1:47 PM on March 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
Someone should translate Moby Dick into beer cap puzzles.
and people could trade and collect them till they had the whole book.
posted by quazichimp at 1:50 PM on March 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
and people could trade and collect them till they had the whole book.
posted by quazichimp at 1:50 PM on March 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
Does this really improve anything?
posted by codswallop at 1:53 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by codswallop at 1:53 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
chavenet's link suggests that this is terrible.
The following passage:
Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Is "translated" with three emoji. Nope. That's just straight up dropping most of the content. This is not even trying to be a translation, which is sad, because an honest attempt to communicate the sentiments in the paragraph that follows using nothing but little icons would have been fascinating.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:58 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
The following passage:
Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Is "translated" with three emoji. Nope. That's just straight up dropping most of the content. This is not even trying to be a translation, which is sad, because an honest attempt to communicate the sentiments in the paragraph that follows using nothing but little icons would have been fascinating.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:58 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
Apologies - the three character line translates "call me ishmael." The next line is 7 characters. It's still dropping most of the content (I think).
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:01 PM on March 1, 2014
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:01 PM on March 1, 2014
What would be great now is if someone who has never read the novel back-translated the first couple of chapters from the emoji.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:03 PM on March 1, 2014 [7 favorites]
posted by Wolfdog at 2:03 PM on March 1, 2014 [7 favorites]
>When did smilies become... emo...juju...cons?
When Apple made them a proprietary property of its operating system instead of a user created glyph.
They started in Japan and made their way into Unicode. Apple would never have come up with the pile of poop emoji.
💩
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:10 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
When Apple made them a proprietary property of its operating system instead of a user created glyph.
They started in Japan and made their way into Unicode. Apple would never have come up with the pile of poop emoji.
💩
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:10 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
If you're seeing boxes on Chrome, try the Chromji extension. I've been using it for a year or so and it picks up all the iOS emoji.
posted by mathowie at 2:18 PM on March 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by mathowie at 2:18 PM on March 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
Language does come in many forms, though translation is a tricky business.
This reminds me of my freshman year English professor who argued a theory that, as Ishmael floats in the ocean for a day and a night clinging to the coffin made by Queequeg, the intricate patterns Queequeg had inscribed (which aren't language as such) engage Ishmael's imagination and help keep him sane and alive until the Rachel rescues him.
posted by audi alteram partem at 2:26 PM on March 1, 2014
This reminds me of my freshman year English professor who argued a theory that, as Ishmael floats in the ocean for a day and a night clinging to the coffin made by Queequeg, the intricate patterns Queequeg had inscribed (which aren't language as such) engage Ishmael's imagination and help keep him sane and alive until the Rachel rescues him.
posted by audi alteram partem at 2:26 PM on March 1, 2014
The blueness of the whale icon is distracting
posted by childofTethys at 2:26 PM on March 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by childofTethys at 2:26 PM on March 1, 2014 [4 favorites]
Exactly--it's a white whale! Talk about missing the point....
posted by Ideefixe at 2:50 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Ideefixe at 2:50 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
I prefer it in the original Klingon.
posted by Splunge at 3:15 PM on March 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
posted by Splunge at 3:15 PM on March 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
We should probably link to the greatest online resource for MD: Power Moby-Dick. Annotated in a non-obtrusive way so you can increase your enjoyment of your favorite whale book.
posted by basicchannel at 3:20 PM on March 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by basicchannel at 3:20 PM on March 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
iShmael
posted by uosuaq at 3:30 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by uosuaq at 3:30 PM on March 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
The blueness of the whale icon is distracting
No, that's just a regular whale reflected in the eye of the giant white whale emoji that is the background image on every page. Can't you see it?
posted by yoink at 4:18 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
No, that's just a regular whale reflected in the eye of the giant white whale emoji that is the background image on every page. Can't you see it?
posted by yoink at 4:18 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
I'm normally first in line to decry the "Too much time on his hands" snark...
but...
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:25 PM on March 1, 2014
but...
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:25 PM on March 1, 2014
Emoji music video: Oneohtrix Point Never's Boring Angel
> When Apple made them a proprietary property of its operating system instead of a user created glyph.
The Wikipedia entry on emoji is worth reading because it goes into useful depth about its evolution.
The Unicoding of emoji is the rare (these days) positive example of corporations attempting to open and standardize something that had been done multiple times in private and in overlapping ways. Emoji was initially created for NTT DoCoMo i-Mode, was adopted and expanded by the competing Japanese phone networks, and only entered the Unicode character space at the joint request of Google and Apple.
Unicode only provides descriptive information about characters it includes. There is no standard definitive emoji font. Apple could have licensed one of the Japanese carriers' emoji fonts, but most of those were coarse bitmaps, so of course Apple drew its own. Apple's version of Emoji has more or less become the default recognized version outside of Japan (or, at least, in Europe and the Americas) in terms of public recognitions because it was the first major vendor in the west to provide renderings. But Apple's drawings are not authoritative and only follow a standard. Apple's drawings do not dictate that standard.
The Unicode standard's complete description of U+1F4F1 (pdf) is "MOBILE PHONE", and its example figure is of an old Nokia-style brick phone with extended antenna. Apple's version of U+1F4F1 is an iPhone, DoCoMo's was of a flip phone, Google's probably involves an Android home screen, and so on. None of these are wrong, because they're only drawings inserted at code points.
You can create your own third-party emoji font, if you'd like. You can do this in the same way you would create any other language font from scratch.
posted by ardgedee at 4:28 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
> When Apple made them a proprietary property of its operating system instead of a user created glyph.
The Wikipedia entry on emoji is worth reading because it goes into useful depth about its evolution.
The Unicoding of emoji is the rare (these days) positive example of corporations attempting to open and standardize something that had been done multiple times in private and in overlapping ways. Emoji was initially created for NTT DoCoMo i-Mode, was adopted and expanded by the competing Japanese phone networks, and only entered the Unicode character space at the joint request of Google and Apple.
Unicode only provides descriptive information about characters it includes. There is no standard definitive emoji font. Apple could have licensed one of the Japanese carriers' emoji fonts, but most of those were coarse bitmaps, so of course Apple drew its own. Apple's version of Emoji has more or less become the default recognized version outside of Japan (or, at least, in Europe and the Americas) in terms of public recognitions because it was the first major vendor in the west to provide renderings. But Apple's drawings are not authoritative and only follow a standard. Apple's drawings do not dictate that standard.
The Unicode standard's complete description of U+1F4F1 (pdf) is "MOBILE PHONE", and its example figure is of an old Nokia-style brick phone with extended antenna. Apple's version of U+1F4F1 is an iPhone, DoCoMo's was of a flip phone, Google's probably involves an Android home screen, and so on. None of these are wrong, because they're only drawings inserted at code points.
You can create your own third-party emoji font, if you'd like. You can do this in the same way you would create any other language font from scratch.
posted by ardgedee at 4:28 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
From 🔥's ❤️ I 🔪 @ thee...
posted by Ian A.T. at 4:41 PM on March 1, 2014 [9 favorites]
posted by Ian A.T. at 4:41 PM on March 1, 2014 [9 favorites]
From fire's love I shank at thee?
posted by slogger at 5:00 PM on March 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
posted by slogger at 5:00 PM on March 1, 2014 [5 favorites]
Great Whale Blue?
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:11 PM on March 1, 2014
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:11 PM on March 1, 2014
(__-,)>{
posted by zueod at 6:23 PM on March 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by zueod at 6:23 PM on March 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
Then there's things like the iPhone whale.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:51 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:51 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
I feel like this would lessen the impact of the sperm-squeezing passage.
posted by TheRedArmy at 7:43 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by TheRedArmy at 7:43 PM on March 1, 2014 [2 favorites]
It's not even "too much time on his hands". It's more "used other people's money to outsource pretty much the whole thing and now wants people to buy hardcovers for $200 apiece". I'm actually intrigued by the notion of telling a whole story in emoji, but if it's possible, this is not the way to do it. There's going to be no consistency of usage. Every sentence has been translated and selected individually, not as a part of the whole. Bonus: You'd have to be able to "translate" 145 sentences an hour at the rates that were being paid in order to make minimum wage.
posted by Sequence at 7:44 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by Sequence at 7:44 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!–pause!–one word! whither flows the fabric?
🌅🚽🚬😴🌅🚽🚬😴🌅🚬🚽😴🌅👻
posted by kickback at 9:45 PM on March 1, 2014
🌅🚽🚬😴🌅🚽🚬😴🌅🚬🚽😴🌅👻
posted by kickback at 9:45 PM on March 1, 2014
“As a conceptual piece, it’s successful,” Benenson says, laughing.
I suspect that's all I need to know about this.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:36 PM on March 1, 2014
I suspect that's all I need to know about this.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:36 PM on March 1, 2014
yeah, i was thinking about that sperm-squeezing passage too. There would have to be an emoji for sperm oil, an emoji for squeezing, an emoji for mistakenly squeezing your partner's hand, and an emoji for homoerotic, I guess
posted by angrycat at 4:35 AM on March 2, 2014
posted by angrycat at 4:35 AM on March 2, 2014
Somehow, I find myself not upset that Firefox refuses to display emoji. Yet another fad I will be able to gratefully ignore.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:30 AM on March 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 5:30 AM on March 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
If emoji confuse and upset you, you better hope that you'll never have to deal with stickers.
posted by zamboni at 6:39 AM on March 2, 2014
posted by zamboni at 6:39 AM on March 2, 2014
Somehow, I find myself not upset that Firefox refuses to display emoji
My Firefox is displaying most of them.
posted by yoink at 7:46 AM on March 2, 2014
My Firefox is displaying most of them.
posted by yoink at 7:46 AM on March 2, 2014
Somehow, I find myself not upset that Firefox refuses to display emoji.
I'm getting a lot of boxes too, and feeling the same. There should be a name for the more general phenomenon of not be being able to be bothered by the latest fad because you didn't bother to keep up with the technology required to connect to it. paleocaged? hors de la gamme? no cyberlawn to yell about?
posted by benito.strauss at 9:06 AM on March 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
I'm getting a lot of boxes too, and feeling the same. There should be a name for the more general phenomenon of not be being able to be bothered by the latest fad because you didn't bother to keep up with the technology required to connect to it. paleocaged? hors de la gamme? no cyberlawn to yell about?
posted by benito.strauss at 9:06 AM on March 2, 2014 [2 favorites]
I couldn't help but notice that in the Kickstarter page and the Lulu store page that the work was promised to be licensed under a CreativeCommons license, yet I can't find any links to a download of any kind.
posted by andycyca at 10:26 AM on March 3, 2014
posted by andycyca at 10:26 AM on March 3, 2014
Firefox can be made to display emoji. I don't think Creative Commons means they have to provide a download, just that if someone wanted to take it and sell it with proper attribution, they could.
posted by jessamyn at 11:39 AM on March 3, 2014
posted by jessamyn at 11:39 AM on March 3, 2014
I don't think Creative Commons means they have to provide a download, just that if someone wanted to take it and sell it with proper attribution, they could.You're right. CC gives anyone preemptive permission to share and remix the work but it's not an obligation to give it out. My amazement was rather about the fact that no one has decided to share a 2010 project even if the author gave permission to do so.
posted by andycyca at 2:06 PM on March 3, 2014
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posted by Triplanetary at 12:59 PM on March 1, 2014 [3 favorites]