The Strange Science of Translating Sarcasm Online

Day 1,809, 18:17 • Published in South Africa South Africa • by Zagarius


Seriously, did he really mean that?

Since the dawn of email, using sarcasm in digital communication has created strife and confusion between friends, colleagues and romantic partners. Sarcasm, after all, is best conveyed using Tone of Voice, a Wink or a Nudge.

Now, as more people are sharing their opinions with casual acquaintances and strangers on social-media sites like Twitter and Facebook - rather than in private text messages to people who know their senses of humor -the sarcasm disconnect is even greater

"My work email is down. I'm devastated," or, "because that was so much fun the last we did it," could mean completely different things to different readers. The confusion has driven some people to create special symbols and characters to clearly mark their snark.



And woe is the data miner who has the challenge of determining what is sarcasm and what isn't. Defined as stating the opposite of what is truly meant, sarcasm is proving to be an obstacle for the academics and marketers who create computer programs to analyze massive pools of online chatters to gauge public opinions about products and politicians.

Sarcasm "is the toughest problem in computing," Computer programming follows strict rules, while natural language, particularly the inside-joke culture of the Web, doesn't.





Lovers of sarcasm who like to tweet are taking matters into their own keyboards... Some have called sarcasm online, "a religion." So a fashion blogger invented a short, twitter friendly sign to denote sarcasm - "(*S)" - and uses it to let her followers know when her tongues is in cheek.


Now a fellow tweeter created a sarcasm mark or "SacMark" to denote sarcasm in tweets available in most App Stores, yours for only $2!



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This story was taken from the Wall Street Journal dated Oct. 31, 2012 Written by: Katherine Rosman. Now I did not use the entire story and I added in the images, of course, I hope you found this educational and you know just how sarcastic I can be here... This is the end of me schooling you now...