Auction sheet reader
Read the auction sheet before you trust the translation.
Photograph the sheet, or type in what it says, and get the grade, every mark on the diagram, the equipment and the inspector’s notes explained in plain English against our guide, with the red flags pulled out and the calculator filled in with the car.
The big number or letter.
As printed: H31.3, R3, 平成26年, or 2019/03.
Every code on the car outline, separated by spaces: A1 U2 W3 XX.
Paste or type the Japanese, one note per line. Known phrases are matched; the rest is glossed word by word.
As printed: SR AW PS PW AAC ナビ TV 社外AW.
The car, for the calculator
Japanese or English.
Sets the country of manufacture for the duty position.
R8.4, or 無 for none.
The reading appears here as you type.
Start with the grade and the diagram codes; they carry most of the meaning. Add the inspector’s notes in Japanese and the phrases that matter are picked out and explained. The car’s details fill the calculator.
How it reads
Transcribe first, judge by the guide, say what it cannot know.
- 1
It reads the eight regions
House and lot, the grades, the car’s details with the era year, the equipment codes, the body diagram, the seller’s sales points, the inspector’s notes and the yes-or-no boxes for repair history, odometer and flood. The photograph route has a vision model transcribe them; the typed route takes them from you.
- 2
It applies the guide’s rules
Repair history, an odometer the house will not vouch for and a flood box stop a bid. Rust, a poor previous repair, replaced panels and the inspector’s warning phrases are things to check. The seller’s box is advertising. The verdict is those rules, nothing more.
- 3
It knows what it cannot do
It does not judge mechanical condition, it cannot tell one house’s grade 4 from another’s, and it cannot spot a forged sheet. Only the auction record pulled by chassis number does that, which is what we do before any bid.
Questions
What it is, and what it is not.
Is this a translation?
It is a transcription with a plain-English rendering. The typed route matches known phrases and glosses the rest word by word, and says which is which. The photograph route has a vision model translate the notes. In both cases check the Japanese yourself; the point is to know what to look at.
Will it catch a forged or substituted sheet?
No. A seller can send a real sheet from a different car or a PDF with a better grade typed in. What cannot be faked is the auction house’s own record, found by chassis number. The chassis verification guide covers that step, and it is the first thing we do on any car.
Why does the reader say it has done its quota?
Each photograph costs us a few cents with the model provider, so the reader is capped per day and per connection. When it is capped, type the codes in: the reading is identical and free.
What happens to my photo?
It is shrunk in your browser, sent to our reader, passed once to the model provider’s API for the transcription, and discarded. We keep the token count and nothing else. The typed route never leaves your browser.
The reader is an aid to reading a document, not an inspection or advice. Grades are the inspector’s judgement relative to age and differ between houses; the sheet describes the car on the day of the auction. Before bidding, the sheet is pulled from the auction record by chassis number.