Myanmar Begins Transition to International Font Encoding System

Until October 1, electronic content in Burmese largely lacked Unicode support. (Wikimedia Commons)

Myanmar’s government officially began a countrywide transition to global font encoding standard Unicode for all Burmese content on October 1. With roughly 90 percent of all Burmese device users on Zawgyi font, switching to Unicode is a massive but important endeavor for Myanmar’s integration into the tech-driven international economy. According to the Japan Times, all institutional authorities—from arms of government to financial institutions to media companies—are now legally required to distribute electronic communication in Unicode-based fonts.

Computers store and generate language by assigning numerical codes—known as code points—to individual letters and characters. These code points are consistent within each specific encoding system so that all other computers can translate the code points into the identical set of characters intended by the original computer’s operator. This process of translation from numbers to characters is known as decoding; encoding is the process of translating characters to code points. Character encoding systems govern these code point assignments.

Unicode and Zawgyi, as character encoding systems, are thus responsible for the generation of characters for particular languages in creating a set of rules for how code points are decoded and encoded. The two systems are critically different, however, in that Unicode codes for nearly every living language on the planet while Zawgyi only maps Burmese characters and is incompatible with other language symbols. Due to Zawgyi’s exclusivity, its users are only able to communicate with other Zawgyi users and cannot make use of search engines. A Zawgyi-based Myanmar is thus heavily isolated from a Unicode-based tech world, and the government is aiming to increase Myanmar’s technological connectivity through the transition. With Unicode systems, Burmese users will finally be able to access countless Unicode-only applications and web platforms. Text-to-voice and artificial intelligence development will also be new avenues for Burmese citizens to explore as Unicode becomes standard.

Myanmar also harbors a number of minority languages that are not encoded by Zawgyi but are supported by Unicode. Hanifi, one of the written language systems of the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority, is supported by Unicode but not Zawgyi. Other minority languages that are Unicode-supported include Sanskrit, Shan, and Mon.

Facebook is among the most important Internet platforms for many Burmese citizens and has strongly supported the transition to a Unicode-based system. Posts written in Zawgyi-encoded font are harder for Facebook staff to monitor for violations of hate speech regulations. Facebook acknowledged unregulated usage of its platform to propagate hate speech in late 2018, the New York Times reports. As a result, Facebook has wholeheartedly supported Myanmar’s transition to Unicode with integration of autoconversion programs. Other internet giants like Google and Microsoft have also made critical developmental leaps in the transition process.

Switching, however, will not be easy. According to the Japan Times, roughly ten to 15 percent of older phones lack the capacity to process Unicode at all. Poorer consumers will thus be disenfranchised by the mandatory switch to Unicode, the transition possibly leaving them out of the loop. On a basic level, Zawgyi users will find it difficult to communicate with their Unicode-based friends and vice versa. Media companies surely will lose readership among Zawgyi-based readers.