Keith Broni is an emoji translator, but it's not what you think

Emojis are sprinkled through 92% of the world’s 3.2bn internet users’ virtual messages. Jonathan deBurca Butler meets the Irish man who’s helping us make sense of them all

EMOJIS have come a long way since their creator, Shigetaka Kurita, unveiled the alphabet’s first 200 characters back in 1999. Today there are no fewer than 6,666 separate characters officially recognised by UNICODE — the emoji world governing body — (who knew?).

“Emoji are all over the globe,” says Keith Broni of Today Translations.