The flat-pack shelf came with instructions in Japanese, and the wifi was down
The shelf was meant to take twenty minutes. The instructions were entirely in Japanese, the wifi had picked that moment to drop out, and I had a dozen identical screws in my hand. Here’s how the whole manual became readable on the floor.
Everyone has built the flat-pack shelf on the lounge-room floor, surrounded by little bags of screws and a panel that’s somehow upside down. Mine was a HANA LIVING 2-Tier Shelf, Model SH-200, and it had clearly never expected to leave Japan. The booklet was beautifully printed and completely in Japanese: 2段の棚, a hardware list, neat exploded diagrams with arrows I couldn’t follow. I could see twelve cam locks. I had no idea what to do with them.
Normally I’d just photograph a page and look it up, but the wifi had dropped and my signal in that corner of the flat was one sad bar that wasn’t loading anything. I’d been using Docusy to scan documents and had a vague memory of a Translate button along the bottom. With nothing to lose and a half-built shelf judging me, I opened the manual photo and tapped it.
From Japanese to readable, on the floor
- Open the manual and tap Translate. I brought up the photo of the instruction page and tapped Translate in the bottom toolbar. No menu of options, no spinner waiting on a connection.
- It rewrote the page in place. The Japanese turned to English exactly where it sat: ‘2-Tier Shelf’, ‘Cam lock x12’, ‘Phillips screwdriver’, ‘Assembly Steps’. Every exploded diagram and arrow stayed put, so the words still lined up with the right panel.
- I followed it step by step. ‘Insert the wooden boards’, ‘Align a shelf and turn clockwise to tighten.’ Suddenly the twelve cam locks made sense, and I worked down the page in order.
I built the thing in one go after that, no guessing, no upside-down panels. When it was standing and level, I kept the scan in Docusy with the English a single tap away, so the next flat-pack from the same brand won’t catch me out either. The booklet went in the drawer; I didn’t need it anymore.
Got a manual you can’t read?
Docusy is free to download on iPhone & iPad. Next time the instructions are in the wrong language, the fix is already in your pocket. (Translation requires iOS 18 or later.)
