利

利 is Unicode character number 21033 id est, X5229 (利), KanjiLiberal (CJK )
Picture: 利 ; uses 3 bytes. These bytes are:
xE5 x88 xA9 in the hexadecimal representation and
229 136 169 in the decimal representation.

In Japanese, 利 may have sense of gains, advantage, profit, merit , benefit, grace, interests , something good and wanted.
In Japanese, 利 can be pronounced as «リ» («ri»), «きく» («kiku»), «⁠するどい» («surudoi»), ⁠«とし» («doshi»).

Character 利 may have also other meanings and other pronunciations dependently on the context.

Character X5229 利 is easy to confuse with
character XF9DD 利 :
Due to the bug(s) in widely spread software(s), pictures of these characters look similar.
Even some software confuse these characters.

For this confusion, neither character X5229 利 nor character XF9DD 利 are allowed at Tarja.
Their transliterations to Hiragana or to Romanji or the translation into English or
the explicit Unicode hexadecimal number (X5229 or XF9DD) should be used instead.

Jisho

https://jisho.org/search/利

り えき
利益
Common word JLPT N3 Wanikani level 28 ..

Noun 1. profit; gains​ ..

Noun 2. benefit; advantage; good; interests (e.g. of society)

3. grace (of God, Buddha, etc., esp. as attained through rightful actions, prayer, adherence to one's faith, etc.); blessing; miracle​

4. Profit (economics)​

..

Other forms

利益 【りやく】

りよう 利用

Confusion

Character X5229 利 is easy to confuse with
character XF9DD 利.

Even a native Japanese speaker looking at characters 利, 利 is unlikely to guess:
Which of them is character number X5229?
Which of them is character number XF9DD?

Such a characters in a meaningful text or (even worse) in some programming code may lead to a bug that is difficult to catch.

The textbooks on Japanese as well as the Japanese teachers usually just ignore the problem.
This ignorance makes the confusion even harder, more grave, more difficult, more dangerous and more destructive.

Due to this confusion, neither character X5229 利 nor character XF9DD 利 are allowed in technical language Tarja.

In Tarja, the transliterations to Hiragana or to Romanji or the translation into English or
the explicit Unicode hexadecimal number (X5229 or XF9DD) should be used instead.

In such a way, at the translation from Japanese to Tarja, the following words may happen to be suitable instead of character X5229 利 or instead of character XF9DD 利:

«リ» («ri»), «きく» («kiku»), «⁠するどい» («surudoi»), ⁠«とし» («doshi»), «gain(s)», «advantage», «profit», «merit», «benefit», «grace», «interest(s)».

If the character needs to be specified more precisely, the explicit hexadecimal number X5229 (or XF9DD) should be used instead of the Kanji.

The last option makes the text more difficult to read,
but avoids the confusions and
allows the straightforward translation back, from Tarja to Japanese.

Tarja may be useful tool as an intermediate language at the translation from Japanese to other languages, although, perhaps, such a translation cannot compete with the automatic translators such as Deepl, GoogleTranslator or ChatGPT. (The automatic translators do not use the graphical representation of the characters; so, the sabotage of the font designers does not affect the quality of the translation.)

Also, Tarja may be useful tool at learning Japanese: it avoids one of the most difficult properties of Japanese, absence of unique, exclusive picture for some Japanese characters.

In particular, this applies to analysis of sentences that include character X5229 利 or character XF9DD 利.

Warning

The description of character 利 above is based on the publications cited.

Such a description may require a revision by a native Japanese speaker.

References

Keywords

«Advantage», «CJK», «Confusion», «Gain», «Japanese», «Kanji», «KanjiLiberal», «KanjiConfudal», «Merit», «Profit», «[[]]», «Tarja», «[[]]», «Unicode», «X5229» «利», «XF9DD» «利», «リ», «きく», «⁠するどい», ⁠«とし»,