Unicode's Lament (Hannah Johns)

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• (Posted 2018-06-04)  CPDL #49987:     

Editor: Hannah Johns (submitted 2018-06-04).   Score information: A4, 6 pages, 184 kB   Copyright: CC BY SA

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Unicode's Lament
Composer: Hannah Johns
Lyricist:

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Unknown

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 2018
Description: 

Original text and translations

English text

Language and computers are really hard to blend:
How do you use ones and zeroes to store the messages you send?
There are many different methods for every language 'neath the sun,
That's why we made the Unicode consortium.

Computers aren't the greatest at knowing what you mean:
Without clear rules they don't know how to put Thai on a Russian screen.
We need a global standard, so in nineteen-ninety-one
We founded the Unicode consortium.

Things were going well across lands near and far
Unitl we reached Japan and the work of Shigetaka Kurita.
In some left-over space in their encoding scheme
He placed pictures and called them emoji.

When we first saw it we thought 'what a nifty trick!'
You could send common pictures without data super quick.
So we put them with the smiley, but little could we see
What would happen when the world found emoji.

When Apple took an interest in selling in Japan
And quietly added support, poo emoji hit the fan;
Americans said 'Give us emoji as well!
Where's burrito? and what's a love hotel?'

Since then the Unicode consortium
Has become famous for dumb glyphs you press with your thumb.
Our goals were so noble, but we were outshined by far
By the work of Shigetaka Kurita.

There's no going back now, there's no way I fear,
'Cos Oxford made an emoji word of the year.
The world has decided, by popular decree,
That our job is to make more emoji.