Kudos For Moving Full Steam Ahead into China
China is one of the mobile markets that looks set for huge growth. And time to time, we hear startups in Southeast Asia wanting to do things in/for the Chinese market. But few really did it. I heard the Burpple team was wanting to localize its social food journal app for the Chinese market. And then bam — a month later — the startup came out with a sweet-looking Chinese iOS app.
中国への全速前進の動きを褒め称えよう
中国は、大きな成長を遂げると見られているモバイル市場の1つである。そして我々は時々、中国市場で、もしくは中国市場向けに何かをしたいと考える東南アジアのスタートアップについて耳にする。だが、実際にそれを実現したのは数社のスタートアップに過ぎない。私は、Burppleチームが自らのソーシャルフードジャーナルを中国市場向けにローカライズしたがっている、との話を聞き入れたのだが、なんとその1ヵ月後、当スタートアップはなかなか見た目がクールな中国語のiOSアプリをリリースした。
I was pleasantly surprised when I first learned about it. Few startups have the balls to move full steam ahead, especially when it comes to China. So that piece of news came to me as a signal on how decisive and fast-moving the team is and I thought it deserves kudos for that.
When I dig deeper on why China is part of Burpple’s radar, co-founder Elisha Ong explained to me:
私はこのニュースを初めて聞いた時、良い意味で驚かされた。多くのスタートアップは全速力で前進する度胸などなく、ましてやそれが中国への動きと言うのであればなおさらだ。なので、このニュースは私に、当チームがいかに決断力に富み素早いのかを知らせてくれ、その動きは賞賛を得るに値すると感じた。
なぜ中国がBurppleの指標の一部であるのかをさらに掘り下げていたとき、共同創始者の1名であるElisha Ongは以下のように説明してくれた：
Chinese food culture is deep and its history is long. With China being one of the most popular countries on Burpple, it was natural for us to move to localize the app to make it more effortless for users to use – coupled with one of their favorite social networks, Sina Weibo. We want to create a platform where people in China can use to remember, organize and explore curated food moments effortlessly.
中国の食文化は深く、歴史も長い、中国がBurppleでもっとも人気の国となっている時期に、利用者にもっと簡単に使ってもらうため、アプリケーションを地元化するのは自然な判断でした。中国で人気のソーシャルネットワーク、Sina Weiboと協力関係も築きました。僕達は基礎となる物を作りたいんです。中国の方が簡単に食事の記録を記録し、整理し、発信する物を作りたかったんです。
The team also tried several popular Chinese apps, such as Weibo, WeChat, and QQ, to understand how apps in China work. They also explored deeper on how Facebook and Instagram translate their features into Chinese in a way that makes sense while maintaining the fun and spirit it has in English. Elisha shares more:
We creatively came up with our own terms and descriptions right from the welcome screen to a user “burppling” (打嗝) their favorite “food moment” (食刻) into their “boxes” (箱簿). Other terms include “reburp” (转嗝), and of course the app name Burpple (饱贝食记) which means a precious and sumptuous food journal.
Burpple is only available in iOS for now but I was told to “stay tuned” for the Android version, which seems to suggest that it is already in the pipeline. Most smartphone users in China are Android users anyway, so it is necessary for any mobile-first startup to have that in place.
To team Burrple: I think it has been good execution thus far and kudos for moving full steam ahead!
