The Bible, one of the most popular and most translated texts in the world, has been made even more appealing to young people by its recent translation into emoji, that is to say, the little icons of faces used in chat rooms and social networks. The result of the experiment is a 3,300-page book, subtitled The Scriptures 4 Millenials–that is, young people born after 1980. The translation is also available on iTunes and Twitter.
This is not the first attempt to produce books in emoji. A few weeks ago, three Italian researchers translated Pinocchio into this iconic language with the help and suggestions of Twitter users; last year the daily paper, The Guardian, ran an emoji translation of U.S. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, and Chinese artist Xu Bing has written a novel entitled A Story without Words entirely in emoji.