Recent Unicode Events
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RECENT EVENTS
January 28, 2025.
Virtual Workshop.
Bidirectional Text (Part 3): Mastering Bidirectional Content for Translators & Localizers
Description
Bidi is a feature of certain scripts – such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Urdu – that write their letters horizontally right-to-left on a page or screen, whereas other characters, such as digits, flow left-to-right – hence the name “bidirectional” (bidi for short).
This virtual workshop will discuss common issues in handling right-to-left and left-to-right text (or bidirectional text ”Bidi”). The event will discuss tips and strategies for overcoming right-to-left challenges when using existing translation tools. This event will explore how Bidi text functionality is implemented and supported across platforms, with examples drawn from different platforms, including Wikipedia, which handles content in over 300 languages, including 16 right-to-left (RTL) languages.
This session is ideal for translators, localizers, developers, linguists, and anyone interested in multilingual content management and Bidi functionality. Part 3 builds on two earlier Bidi events hosted by Unicode: Part 1: The Basics of Bidi and Part 2: Delving into Bidi. These can help you get the most out of the session. Both recordings can viewed here.
Register Now!
Speakers
Moriel Schottlender is a physicist turned software engineer turned systems architect, currently working on modernizing Wikipedia’s systems. She’s an Open Source enthusiast, right-to-left language support and localization evangelist, and a general domain hoarder. You can read more on https://moriel.tech, or find her as @mooeypoo on Mastodon, BlueSky, and most other social platforms.
Osama Shabaneh started his career 35 years ago as an Arabic / English translator and localization specialist in the technology industry. He then transitioned to lead localization projects spanning more than 100 languages (including half a dozen RTL languages) across different divisions in Microsoft Corporation. He experienced firsthand the unique challenges Right-to-Left translators and developers face as they try to provide a seamless customer experience from a language perspective.
October 22-23, 2024.
San Francisco Bay Area. (Hosted at Google).
Unicode Technology Workshop (UTW 2024)
Description
Join us for two days
of community building around the Unicode technology that makes software work for billions of people. Expect two days of workshops, seminars, free-form discussions, and lightning talks centered around i18n libraries, locale data frameworks, globalization tooling, localization pipelines, input methods, and text rendering. Network with the developers and users to help shape the future of Unicode technology.
This event will focus on building more connections within the internationalization community. Expect to come away with deeper knowledge on how to solve tough problems in the i18n and l10n space and how to engineer products that work better for global users. GILT professionals, especially those who build or use Unicode technologies, are encouraged to attend and to host sessions. To encourage maximum collaboration amongst the attendees, this is an in-person-only event.
Resources
Call
for submissions: For those interested in participating in and
contributing to the event, the call for submissions is now open.
If you work on Unicode internationalization technologies or use
Unicode internationalization technologies in your work, we want
to hear from you. You can register your interest in contributing
using the following link: Call
for Submissions
Register Now!
To find out more details about the Unicode Technology Workshop,
including location details, visit:
https://www.unicode.org/events/utw/.
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Bidirectional Text (Part 2): Delving into Bidi
Description
This event is the second of a three-part series on bidirectional
text (“bidi”). Bidi is a feature of certain scripts – such as Arabic, Hebrew,
and Urdu – that write their letters horizontally right-to-left on a page or
screen, whereas other characters, such as digits, flow left-to-right – hence the
name “bidirectional”.
Part 1 took place on June 25, 2024, and focused on a general introduction to
bidi. This second Bidi event will give three bidi experts an opportunity to
share more information, including on UI, as well as answer more user specific
questions. Those implementing bidi text and have come across specific problems
are especially encouraged to participate.
Attendees are strongly encouraged to watch the
Bidirectional Text (Part 1): The Basics
of Bidi session video on the Unicode YouTube Channel for background on the
topic.
Register Now
Speakers
Adil Allawi has worked for over 40 years in multilingual
engineering. One of his early projects was working on one of the first
implementations of right to left text in a personal computer on the Apple II. As
such he feels personally responsible for all the bidi problems that have
happened since. Adil has been a regular contributor to Unicode, consulting on
the definition of Bidi isolates and auto direction and the encoding of Arabic
Mathematical Symbols. He currently works at Apple where he has contributed to
right-to-left support in multiple products including iWork, App Store, Music and
Apple TV.
Ayman Aldahleh began his career in the late 1980s at a small
software company named 4C in Kuwait, where he focused on developing PC-DOS
applications that supported the Arabic language. He soon moved to Microsoft,
where he led the Arabization of several early Microsoft products, including DOS,
Works, Windows, and Word. At Microsoft, Ayman’s role expanded to include support
for bidirectional and complex script languages, text rendering, font management,
and accessibility. He eventually managed the engineering team that scaled the
internationalization platform for all Microsoft Office applications, enhancing
multilingual and machine translation features. His final role at Microsoft
involved overseeing cross-platform user experience for the Microsoft Fluent
design. Ayman retired from Microsoft in late 2023 but remains an enthusiastic
advocate for technology and internationalization. He has been a member of the
Unicode Board of Directors since 2017. Ayman earned a Bachelor of Science in
Computer Engineering from the University of Arizona.
Roozbeh Pournader is an internationalization engineer who has been
contributing to the Unicode Standard since 1999. He started his
internationalization career in Iran in 1994 when he was a high school student.
After moving to the United States, he has worked at companies such as Google and
WhatsApp. He has received a Unicode Bulldog award for his contributions to
Unicode and CLDR’s support for complex scripts, and is Vice Chair of the Unicode
Script Encoding Working Group.
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
8:00 - 9:00 am Pacific Time (California)
Bidirectional Text (Part 1): The Basics of Bidi
Description
A number of scripts, such as Arabic and
Hebrew, write their letters horizontally on a page or screen, running right
to left. A complication for these scripts is that other characters, such as
digits, flow left-to-right, and can occur on the same line, or even
alongside other left-to-right text, such as Latin. Text that handles both
right-to-left and left-to-right text is called “bidirectional” text (“bidi”
in short).
How to handle bidi text on browsers and in
other software is challenging for both general users and implementers. This
webinar will describe the basics with examples. It will be followed by a live
question-and-answer period. A more in-depth question and answer session will
take place August 13, 2024.
Register Now
Speakers
Richard Ishida served
as the Internationalization Lead for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
for 20 years. He also serves on the Unicode Editorial Committee and the
Unicode Script Encoding Working Group.
Roozbeh Pournader is
an internationalization engineer who has been contributing to the
Unicode Standard since 1999. He started his internationalization career
in Iran in 1994 when he was a high school student. After moving to the
United States, he has worked at companies such as Google and WhatsApp.
He has received a Unicode Bulldog award for his contributions to Unicode
and CLDR’s support for complex scripts, and is Vice Chair of the Unicode
Script Encoding Working Group.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
9:00-10:00 am Pacific time (California)
How to make your emoji proposal the best that it can be!
Description
Every year the Unicode Consortium receives hundreds of emoji
proposals, and only very few make their way into keyboards
across the world as encoded characters. There are many
categories that are at or nearing full saturation. New emoji
additions should provide significant new options for
communication with the expectation that they will be broadly
used.
This event will cover guidelines, highlight the components of
a successful emoji proposal, and share how to ensure your
proposal is as high quality as possible to have the best chance
of being accepted.
The moderator is Jennifer Daniel and the presenters are
Wilder Wells and Samantha Sunne.
Register
Now!
Speakers
Jennifer Daniel is an artist, journalist, and Chair of the Unicode
Emoji Standard and Research Working Group. If you have ever wept a happy tear 🥲, experienced brain fog
😶🌫️, gestured a salute 🫡, melted into a puddle 🫠, or wanted to disappear
🫥 … you may be familiar with her work ;-)
Wilder Wells is the Program Manager for the Emoji
Standard and Research Working Group.
Samantha Sunne is an organizer with Emojination, an organization that
aims to promote more diverse emoji. She helps lead the intake process for new
emoji submissions from the public, including criteria for inclusion and the process
for discussion in the Emoji Standard and Research Working Group.
If you are interested in Unicode news and other upcoming events, please sign up for our newsletter.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
9am-10am Pacific Time (California)
MessageFormat Virtual Open House
Description
MessageFormat is a critical API for anyone interested in building
fluent, accessible, and well-localized applications. Any part of the user
interface that displays data or varies dynamically at runtime needs to provide
for the formatting requirements of the locale and the grammatical needs of the
user’s language. As such, MessageFormat is “table stakes” for internationalizing
applications.
The MessageFormat Working Group is a part of the CLDR Technical
Committee of Unicode. After several years of work, they have produced a
Technical Preview for MessageFormat 2.0, a next generation specification
designed to address critical gaps in current formatting solutions, provide
access to new internationalization APIs rooted in CLDR data, and build a syntax
that is portable across many programming languages and runtime environments.
Now that the specification is close to being stabilized, the
MessageFormat Working Group would like to engage with interested members of the
internationalization, developer, localization, and translation communities.
If you are a platform, framework, and programming language
developer, localization manager, engineer, or translator, you will want to join
us for this virtual Open House event to hear more about the progress achieved,
and to bring your questions to the people involved.
Register now. Please note this session will be recorded and available via
the Unicode YouTube channel.
Session Host
Addison Phillips is the new Chair of the Message Formatting Working
Group. He is also the chair of the W3C Internationalization Working Group and an
active participant in the creation of internationalization standards such as
Unicode. He is a co-author of IETF BCP 47, which is the standard for language
and locale identifiers.
Supporting Resources
MessageFormat GitHub Repo
UTW MessageFormat v2 (Video)
November 7-8, 2023
Unicode Technology Workshop
Description
Join us for two days of community building around the Unicode
technology that makes software work for billions of people. Expect
workshops, seminars, free-form discussions, and lightning talks centered around
i18n libraries, locale data frameworks, globalization tooling, localization
pipelines, input methods, and text rendering. Network with the developers and
users to help shape the future of Unicode technology.
November 7-8, 2023. Bay Area (Hosted at Google).
Resources
Call for submissions: For those interested in participating in and
contributing to the event, the call for submissions is now open. If you work on
Unicode internationalization technologies or use Unicode internationalization
technologies in your work, we want to hear from you. You can register your
interest in contributing using the following link:
Call for Submissions
About the UTW and the IUC
The Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC) had two main
outcomes: evangelizing Unicode to a broad audience, and fostering connections
and knowledge sharing amongst Unicode professionals. Since the annual IUC ended
in 2021, Unicode has significantly grown its online presence, including a
YouTube channel with over 70 videos and several virtual events with topics
ranging from CLDR to Emoji to ICU4X. This has enabled Unicode to reach a larger
and more global audience than ever before.
The Unicode Technology Workshop (UTW), on the other hand, is
focused on providing a venue for professionals in the Unicode, i18n, and l10n
space to learn from each other and tackle the latest challenges. This is
reflected through the greater focus on unconference and workshop style sessions
at UTW.
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
11am-12pm Pacific Time (California)
Virtual Event - Open House on Script and Character Encoding
Description
The Unicode Standard aims to make the scripts used to write the
languages of the world accessible on computers and devices. However, the process
of getting characters and scripts into the Unicode Standard has often been
puzzling. How does one successfully propose a script or a handful of characters?
How are decisions made?
Join us for a Virtual Open House, where you will be able to ask
these (and other) script and character encoding questions to seasoned Unicode
experts.
Register now. Please note this session will be recorded and available via
the Unicode YouTube channel.
Speakers
Roozbeh Pournader
Roozbeh Pournader is an internationalization engineer who has been
contributing to the Unicode Standard since 1999. He started his
internationalization career in Iran in 1994 when he was a high school student.
After moving to the United States, he has worked at companies such as Google and
WhatsApp. He has received a Unicode Bulldog award for his contributions to
Unicode and CLDR’s support for complex scripts, and is a Vice Chair of the
Unicode Script Ad Hoc Subcommittee.
Lorna Evans
Lorna Evans has worked with SIL International since 1985. She has
been supporting writing systems by developing Unicode fonts and keyboards for
over 20 years. Lorna has been involved in Unicode proposals for about 20 years.
She has written proposals for whole scripts and for new characters in various
scripts including Latin, Cyrillic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Odia, and Lisu.
Supporting Resources
Documenting and Preserving Languages: A Talk on Character Encoding, Keyboards,
and Fonts by Deborah Anderson and Andrew Glass
Scripts and
Character Encoding by Deborah Anderson, Script Ad Hoc Group Chair
Other Script
and Character Encoding-related talks on the Unicode YouTube Channel
FAQs on
Script and Character Encoding by Deborah Anderson, Script Ad Hoc Group Chair
June 22, 2023
CLDR, Beyond Locale Data
Description
The online event hosted by Common Locale Data Repository’s (CLDR)
workgroups covers topics such as person name formatting, the keyboard workgroup,
CLDR resources, message formation, and vision/direction of CLDR. The event
includes speakers, demos, and a live Q&A session. Attendees learn about the
power and capabilities of the new person name formats and keyboard layouts, how
to leverage CLDR’s respective structures and future directions to support more
locales and use cases.
Presenters
Mark Davis: Chair of the CLDR Technical Committee
Andrew Glass: Chair of the CLDR Keyboards Subcommittee
Steven Loomis: Chair of the new CLDR Digitally Disadvantaged Languages Subcommittee
Mike McKenna: Chair of the CLDR Person Name Subcommittee
Addison Phillips: Chair of the Message Formatting Subcommittee
Resources
CLDR, Beyond
Locale Data - YouTube
May 16, 2023
Documenting and Preserving Languages with Unicode: A Talk on
Character Encoding, Keyboards, and Fonts
Description
The Unicode Standard is the basis of electronic communication today
on computers and devices, and hence is fundamental to documenting and preserving
languages and the scripts used to write them. But understanding how Unicode is
structured, how characters and scripts are added, and how to get characters on
to keyboards and in fonts can be challenging. This webinar is geared to language
practitioners and users generally. It provides an overview of Unicode, explains
how characters are organized in charts and how to propose new characters, and
discusses accessing the characters on keyboards and fonts.
Presenters
Deborah Anderson: Script Ad Hoc Chair and Lead, Script Encoding
Initiative, UCB
Andrew Glass: Chair of Unicode CLDR Keyboard Subcommittee and
Principal Program Manager at Microsoft
Resources
Presentation Slides - Debbie Anderson
April 19, 2023
ICU4X Virtual Open House
Description
ICU4X was launched September 2022 to bring modular, lightweight,
and secure internationalization components for Unicode (ICU) to new programming
languages and environments. This Open House was held to hear success stories of
clients adopting ICU4X, meet the team, answer questions, and engage in a dialog
to direct the future direction of the project.
Presenters
Shane Carr: Chair of the ICUX Subcommittee
Elango Cheran: Software Engineer, Google, Inc
Tyler Denniston: Senior Software Engineer, Wear, Google, Inc
Resources
ICU4X Virtual
Open House - YouTube
September 28, 2022
Overview of Internationalization
Description
Hear from some of the experts working to ensure that everyone can
fully communicate and collaborate in their languages across all software and
services.
Segment 1:
Introduction to Internationalization
Speaker
Addison Phillips: Internationalization Engineer
Description
What is “internationalization”? Why should it matter to your
software development organization? In this session, Addison defines the core
concepts, shows examples, and highlights how companies that follow
internationalization best practices can deliver a culturally relevant product in
the customer’s language simply, reliably, and without costly re-engineering.
Segment 2:
Unicode Consortium: Past, Present, and Future
Speaker
Mark Davis: Cofounder and President of the Unicode Consortium
Description
Unicode provides the foundation and the building blocks for you to
apply internationalization best practices in your software. In the session, Mark
provides an overview of the technical origins of Unicode. It used to be hard to
support multiple languages and cultures in a single system seamlessly. But now,
many languages are represented in most major operating systems, devices, and
applications, thanks to the work of Unicode.
Segment 3: Scripts and Character Encoding
Speakers
Deborah Anderson: Chair of the Script Ad Hoc Committee
Description
The effort is still ongoing to identify, research, and represent
the scripts used to write the languages of the world—both modern and historic
—in the Unicode character encoding. In this session, Debbie talks about scripts
and character encoding and the steps and time required to encode a new script.
She highlights the impact character that encoding can have in preserving and
representing our civilization through our written legacy. This talk outlines
additional steps necessary for using new Unicode characters effectively on
devices.
Segment 4:
Unicode CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository)
Speakers
Mark Davis and Annemarie Apple: Chair and Vice Chair of the CLDR
Committee
Description
The Unicode CLDR underpins internationalization quality for most
modern software. In this presentation, Mark and Annemarie show us the different
types of data that CLDR contains and examples of where you can see it in
commonly used software products. They also discuss data coverage requirements in
a language needed for different software use cases. Having high-quality and
authoritative data is essential. Next, they describe the process by which CLDR
data is contributed and reviewed by language experts in order to obtain the best
answers for each language. They wrap up with a discussion about the variety of
ways that individuals and organizations can contribute to CLDR and software
internationalization based on their skill sets and interests.
Segment 5:
Unicode ICU (International Components for Unicode)
Speaker
Markus Scherer: Chair of ICU Committee
Description
ICU is a software library providing internationalization APIs with
the most up-to-date algorithms for the widest coverage of locales, and its
implementations are highly optimized for performance. In this session, Markus
gives us a small window into the full set of ICU functionality. If you are a
software engineer looking to apply internationalization best practices, you will
likely do so by using ICU, directly or indirectly. ICU gives you APIs in C, C++,
and Java and makes readily available all of the valuable Unicode data covered in
the other sessions – the Unicode property data for encoded scripts and
characters, and the locale data for various types of internationalization
functionality.
Segment 6:
Unicode ICU4X 2022
Speaker
Shane Carr: Chair of ICU4X Subcommittee
Description
There is a trend towards smaller, more mobile devices, and they
bring tight constraints on the resource sizes they can support. Shane
demonstrates the significant progress that ICU4X has made towards reaching its
goal of operating in resource-constrained environments. ICU4X has made available
its version 1.0 release in September 2022. As new programming languages and new
devices continue to be created, the problem of not having new, easy solutions
for good internationalization grows, too. Despite the audacious scope of the
problem, ICU4X is proactively addressing the problem so that implementing
internationalization best practices can be easily achieved anywhere.
Segment 7:
Q&A Session
Speaker
Mark Davis: President and Co-Founder of Unicode
Description
Dr. Mark Davis is one of the key technical contributors to the
Unicode specifications and projects. Mark founded both ICU and CLDR, and is a
co-author of BCP 47. In this recorded session of the live Q&A, Mark answers
participant questions about Unicode projects and the organization itself.
July 13, 2022
Ask Unicode Anything – How Emoji and Language Play Together in our
World
Description
We all know about emoji, but how do we communicate with them? In
this segment from the live zoom event, "How Emoji and Language Play Together in
our World", Jennifer and Anne talk about how people use emoji as well as some
specific topics like emoji variations and combinations.
Presenters
Jennifer Daniel: Chair of the Emoji SubCommittee
Anne Quito: Design Reporter at Quartz
Resources
The Art of Using Emoji and How Different People Communicate - YouTube
Unicode’s Role in Emoji and How Emoji are Selected - YouTube
How One Emoji Set Transcends Borders, Languages, and Time - YouTube
![[Unicode]](https://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif){kind=small}
