Wednesday, January 31, 2024

NEW Event on February 20 – Virtual Open House on MessageFormat

 Registration is Now Open!

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.


Who: 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. 


When: Tuesday, February 20, 2024 starting at 9am (San Francisco), 12pm (New York), and 6pm (Berlin).


Register Now! Please note this session will be recorded and available via the Unicode YouTube channel.

Getting Started with Message Formatting


MessageFormat GitHub Repo

Why MessageFormat v2?

Goals & Deliverables

Draft Specification and Syntax

UTW MessageFormat v2 (Video)





About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is the premier non-profit open source, open standards body for the internationalization of all software and services. 


For more than 30 years, the Unicode Consortium has coordinated the efforts of a worldwide team of volunteer programmers and linguists to standardize, evolve, and maintain a global software foundation that allows virtually every computer system and service to help people connect using their native language. 


For additional information about Unicode, visit home.unicode.org.



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Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Unicode Welcomes New Board Members!

Giammarresi (left) and Chilana (right)
The Unicode Consortium is pleased to welcome Salvatore “Salvo” Giammarresi of Airbnb and Kulpreet Chilana of Apple to its Board of Directors effective this month.

At its annual member meeting last November, the representatives of Unicode’s Full Level members unanimously elected Salvo and Kulpreet and renewed the terms of Brent Getlin (Adobe) and Teresa Marshall (Salesforce).

Salvo is the Head of Localization at Airbnb and a Board Member at Clear Global (formerly known as Translators without Borders). Previously he held global leadership roles at several technology companies including PayPal and Yahoo. He is a published author and speaker on numerous topics, including localization, internationalization, global program management, and international product management.

Kulpreet has worked in software localization at Apple for 8 years and has more than 12 years of experience in the localization and internationalization industry. He is passionate about using all parts of the software stack to preserve the richness of human culture. He currently manages a team of software engineers that evangelize localization across Apple’s platforms, build features for Apple’s international users and own the localization infrastructure in Xcode.

“We’re excited to have Salvo and Kulpreet join us — they both bring extensive experience in localization and internationalization to the Unicode board,” said Mark Davis, Unicode’s board chair and co-founder, “as well as providing different perspectives on technology and priorities. Speaking for the board, I’d also like to thank David Singer, who has retired from the board after 6 years. Aside from many other contributions, David has helped immensely with pivotal transitions in governance.”

Further information on the Unicode Board can be found here.


Adopt a Character and Support Unicode's Mission

Looking to give that special someone a special something? Or maybe something to treat yourself?
🕉️💗🏎️🐨🔥🚀🍀
Adopt a character or emoji to give it the attention it deserves, while also supporting Unicode's mission to ensure everyone can communicate in their own languages across all devices.
Each adoption includes a digital badge and certificate that you can proudly display!
As Unicode, Inc. is a US-based open source, open standards, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, your contribution may be eligible for a tax deduction. Please consult with a tax advisor for details.