I looked at the instructions of a Tasca Sherman VC recently, and the only text was in Japanese. For details like which road wheel to choose that can be crucial information. Typing Japanese into Google translate is nigh impossible, therefore I tried translating with google glass, which can be done, but of course it leaves for grammatically strange sentences…
will become
Try doing this with a complete set of instructions…
While there is some merit to what you say, Meng contacted me directly before they published their Ford F-150 instructions. Not for the instructions themselves but for a write up on the F-150, which they indeed used. Any grammatical errors there may be are the result of my own failings in English, not any of our overseas friends.
I’ll not bore anyone further with exact quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but I’ll paraphrase one of the chapters:
Motorcycle manuals are not necessarily written by the engineers, or even the mechanics or the production line folks who build the bike. They are written by the guy who is most expendable in the process as far as time goes. And as he has no vested interest in the outcome, the quality suffers as a result. That is after all the theme of the entire novel - quality,
If someone does not care about any project, maintaining a motorcycle, writing a manual or even frying a pork chop, the quality goes down.
Am I saying companies that produce poor instructions (which lack quality) don’t care? To a certain degree they don’t. They care about selling kits. If that means that we the builders have to rely on the poor sap who suffered through the first build and then reports on it online, then who cares?
I point to the infamous Panda M109A7 - not poor instrutions, altough parts were, but just a horrid kit in general, Do you think they cared? Or did they want the first kit out of the chute so they could make a buck or two? Or seventy as the case may be.
There is a trend these days with many products to not even print instructions at all. You’re given a site so that you can watch a video of some other dude assembling the widget. Sometimes there’s a help line, often not. Easier and less costly to post a YouTube video than to lay out, write, and draw instructions that you then have to pay to have printed.
Actually, for reasons that have nothing to do with model building, I’m perfectly fine with that concept if done properly.
And this is from my own brain housing group and not that of Robert Pirsig:
A worker who has no vested interest in a company or its product, and who is more concerned with meeting his daily quota, will not be concerned with quality. He will therefore not infuse any into his workmanship.
Does that sound like any ideology we might be familiar with?
Yep. Two ideologies actually …
Oh yes, Tamiya instructions are the best example of how a set of kit instructions should be. If there is more than one version covered, or in some cases different marking options, they clearly show which parts or alternative parts you need.
On the other hand, lets look at Dragon. They are probably the worst designed, unhelpful set of instructions you can hope to find. There is no link between the version or marking scheme at all, which means you can use the wrong parts, the illustrations are all crowded so it’s hard to see where the parts really go and you have idea what the parts are unless you already have some knowledge of the vehicle. Why should the modeller have to do extensive research, just to build the model? Isn’t that what we’ve paid DMLs high prices for? Another pet peeve is the ubiquitous “Unknown Unit” which seems to feature so strongly in their instructions. So basically what they are saying is “we couldn’t be a**ed to track down the unit, or were just too idle to come up with a known unit with a decent scheme”. Likewise they offered two kits of the Jagdpanzer IV, one with Zimmerit, one without, but with the same marking schemes. Likely?
Tamiya are definitely the market leader in instructions, is it beyond the whit of other manufacturers to follow their lead. Obviously the answer is “Yes”!
Wrong topic
I second DML/DRAGON as being the worst to follow. Only to be followed by the Revell-Germany Aircraft instructions.
Dragon’s issue from my limited builds so far is trying to condense steps and parts placement into as few as possible. The result that I’ve found are views with a very vague hint of parts placement. Which only is compounded by parts w no tabs or locator pins or areas w designed voids leaving you to guess the placement or study areas several steps trying to find a view you can decipher. The worst I encountered was when the drawing is say 3/4 facing away and on the blind side and it’s a numbered piece and a line that’s blocked by other items.
Now my brief exam of a Meng Panther w interior seems to be the exact opposite impression.
Oh let’s not forget some of the maddening vagueness of Eduard PE sets where orientation is a guess until you study/compare/ research and study some more and it slowly dawns on you’ve built away your access to easily place the fiddle bit you so painstakingly folded…
Sure I’ve suffered many of the examples above too, but model-making is a registered blood-sport (or should be) & the thrill of the chase to overcome bad instructions to get the right answer is part of the fun isn’t it? Anyhow before I’m shot down in flames, on a lighter note early on in the hobby I was making a 1:35 Tamiya – possibly the 222 – and forever after treated any Instruction sheet with qualified respect after realising what “auspuf” meant, surely a far better word than the English equivalents.
noun
exhaust [noun] (an outlet from the engine of a car, motorcycle etc for) fumes and other waste.
Yeah I had to look that one up.
Cajun 
Now you can go look up this: der Puff
Knowing how your mind works I can translate this one on my own. Cigarette right?
Cajun 
One of my pet peeves is the instructions for the Tamiya M41. They show b-4 (or is it B-3?) , the gun travel lock sticking straight up, like someone tossed a hand full of Viagra in the gas tank and a sexy red convertible just drove by. As far as I can tell the only time its up is if the barrel is in it (and the part’s molded open clamp shut) Otherwise it’s flat on the fender (with the molded open clamp shut!) 60 some years on you’d think , on ONE of the reprints of the instruction sheet, they could’ve fixed it. (You didn’t mold & print the stuff for all 30 bajillion of those kits they’ve sold at one time!)
Not quite …
Maybe ‘smoking hot’ …
Here’s a musical hint:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Dolly+parton+Chicken+farm#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2e8bd708,vid:FXU8pFJSMmw
The place was apparently called a chicken ranch …
Haa! Guess I don’t know you as well as I thought, I stand corrected, I was thinking more along the lines of UK’s “poof” . . .
https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=4f9dc92c06a7140eJmltdHM9MTY4NjcwMDgwMCZpZ3VpZD0zZWE2ZTkzNy04MmQxLTY2ZjctMDQ2MS1mOTFhODM3OTY3NmImaW5zaWQ9NTUxOA&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=3ea6e937-82d1-66f7-0461-f91a8379676b&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20vdmlkZW9zL3NlYXJjaD9xPXp6IHRvcCBsYSBncmFuZ2UgdmlkZW8mRk9STT1WRFJF&ntb=1
Cajun
One of the things that really helped my German was owning motorcycles in Berlin.
I had to learn a lot of technical words I would not otherwise have learned on the street - Auspuff, Vergasser, Stoßdämpfer…
My Mum (born in Germany 1934) used to say ‘Ruhe im Puff’ (Quiet in the …) when we were too loud.
I think she got that expression from her dad.
The expression can also be extended with ‘der Kaiser fickt’ (I’ll leave that translation as an exercise
to the motivated reader).
The verb ‘puffen’ with conjugation means roughly the same as in English (der Zug pufft, the train is puffing).
A ‘puffer’ is the contact plate at the corner of a railroad wagon that push against the preceeding or following wagon.
The equivalent of the English poof or poofter is 'Schwuler" and the etymology of poofter is rather special (or explicit …)
The Border Tiger is not great. I would even go so far as to say its one of the most disappointing kits I have ever built. From the instructions, to the fit, to some bizarre design choices, to the delay in release so they could rework some parts and instructions (and still had issues), to the amount of flash from a new mold. I have to say I hated building it. I eventually got it looking like a Tiger but it was a thankless slog for me.
My favourite part is when you go to the Eduard site and look at the gallery photos of a built up version and you realize they built it wrong themselves 
I noticed the bizarre design as well, but the build isn’t as bad as working on a unicraft resin kit for me. The fit isn’t so bad on mine, tho it might be because I’m not building the hull by the instruction.
Back in the '80’s, I purchased a piece of audio gear from a respected Japanese company (sounds like Korg), for a gig I was doing. The instruction manuel was both maddening and hilarious. Whoever “translated” it into english…well, it’s best if I give an example. While most of the manuel was, more or less understandable, there were two paragraphs that stood out. They looked like this:
Hjf g hjkdae hytff I gejfejhf k lojihu. Pkog hettt, klghj, wdees jkfd ghjt dfghssj zsdss jk dgg hjssssjks T ghdewss, dghf uaxz J djk asldkjsldj…etc.
I’m not kidding. It went on like this for half the page. Complete jiberish. I had to throw my hands in the air and just start pressing buttons. Hmmm, wonder what happens when I do this. 
So, model kit instructions, as frustrating as they can be - and I agree with everything written above - at least give one an idea (sort of / kind of) of what’s going on.
