It's been about 15 years since the iPhone 4 arrived in Japan. All that time, I could never quite give up on my dream of "putting my own app out into the world." A 48-year-old man who hired developers again and again, paying hundreds of thousands of yen each time — sometimes over a million — and never once got a finished product, has finally completed an app in just three weeks, entirely on his own.
The finished app is "TransferFriends," a fully offline translation app. It was released on the App Store today. But what I want to tell you most today isn't the app's features themselves. It's this one point: "the era when an individual can build an app alone has truly arrived."
For 15 years, I kept "paying money and failing"
I'd been trying my hand at app development since the days when smartphones were still a novelty. Back then, though, I had no programming skills. I had ideas. I had things I wanted to put out into the world. But I didn't have a single means of my own to turn them into reality.
So I had no choice but to hire developers.
We'd hold meeting after meeting, write paper specifications, and get quotes. The amounts they presented were always heavy for an individual. Even so, thinking "if this finally makes my long-held dream a reality," I opened my wallet again and again. Not choosing someone because they were cheap, but betting on the hope that "this company will surely build it."
The result was always the same.
It would seem to go smoothly at first, then communication would stall partway through. For some reason, my requests never got across correctly. What came back was completely different from what I'd pictured in my head. Every time I asked, "Please fix this part like this," extra costs piled up, the back-and-forth stopped meshing, and eventually the project fizzled out. Or it never even reached the word "finished."
I went through that not once or twice, but many times. Before I knew it, 15 years had passed. All I had left was a growing stack of quotes and invoices, and the bitter memory that "in the end, I never once got my own app out into the world."
To be honest, I'd almost given up. I thought app development was for people with abundant funds and specialized skills — not a place for someone like me to set foot. There were many nights I told myself that perhaps dreaming at all had been reckless.
The times had changed — quietly, but decisively
But the changes in the world recently have been nothing short of a "revolution" for someone like me.
Things that used to take teams of specialized engineers months to build can now be put together by an individual, at their own desk, bit by bit through conversation. Describe in words, "I want to build this kind of feature," and it thinks through the design path with you. It writes the actual program. And when you stumble and get stuck, it breaks down "why isn't this working" in terms you can understand.
All of this happens on your own desk, without ordering from anyone. That high wall I couldn't get over 15 years ago, even after paying millions of yen, had quietly disappeared from in front of me.
Still half in doubt, I decided to give myself one more chance to try. This time not by hiring a developer, but with my own hands. If I failed, I'd truly give up. That was my resolve.
Every night after work, I sat down at my desk. Everything was unfamiliar. But each time I stumbled, I asked, learned, and moved forward a little more. In that cycle, the feeling that what I couldn't do yesterday I could do today was something I'd never once experienced in 15 years of setbacks.
From start to finish, it took just three weeks.
The place I couldn't reach in 15 years, no matter how much money I paid, I reached in three weeks, without ordering from anyone, all on my own. When I installed the finished app on my own iPhone and ran it for the first time, what welled up before joy was a quiet shock. "Ah, the times really have changed."
This surely isn't a story about me alone. To everyone who has held an idea close but couldn't take the first step because "I don't have the skills" or "I don't have the money," I want to say loud and clear: right now is an era when you can shape your dream with your own hands.
Why could I do in three weeks what I couldn't in 15 years?
Hearing "three weeks, alone," you might think I did something extraordinary. But looking back, it wasn't my abilities that changed. What changed was the way things are made itself.
When I was hiring developers, all I could do was turn the image in my head into words and diagrams, hand them over, and wait for them to come back in some form. Each round trip took weeks, gaps appeared, and fixing them cost more money and time. There was always a deep valley between "what's in my head" and "the actual app."
This time, that valley wasn't there. I tried things the moment I thought of them and fixed them right away if they were wrong. If I didn't understand something, I asked on the spot. The distance between the image and the finished product came as close to zero as it could. So there was hardly any time spent hesitating. My hands never stopped. The shortness of three weeks wasn't because I worked hard — it was the result of "time spent waiting" disappearing.
Put the other way around, this also means that the people who are stuck, just as I once was, can benefit the most from this era. People who didn't have the skills. People who didn't have the money. People who've failed again and again. It's exactly those people this change will stand behind.
Here's what "TransferFriends"
turned out to be
So what exactly did I build in those three weeks? The theme I chose was "translation" — and specifically, a translation app that "runs completely offline."
Why translation? Because I myself have been troubled over and over by "language" and "signal" abroad. On trips or at business meetings, have you ever experienced things like these?
- In an underground mall or deep inside a shop there's no signal, and your translation app freezes just when you need it
- It feels vaguely unsettling that the contents of an important conversation seem to be sent to some unknown server
- It feels a little awkward to point your phone at the other person to show them the translation
I wanted to resolve that "just one more step" frustration with my own hands. That's why I made TransferFriends. It has three main features.
1. Works completely offline
I designed it so the AI model — the brain of the translation — lives entirely inside the smartphone. Once you've downloaded the model, you can translate even in airplane mode or with no signal at all. Whether it's SIM trouble abroad or places the signal doesn't reach, like underground malls and mountainous areas, it never grinds to a halt. You're freed from that helpless feeling of wandering around looking for a signal.
2. "Confidentiality"
— your conversations don't leak out
Working offline also means your conversations aren't sent to the internet. Complex business secrets and private matters that are hard to share with others are all handled entirely within the device in your hand. I hope that especially people with the worry "I'm afraid what I translated will remain on some server" will use it with peace of mind.
3. Four translation modes for different situations
It's not used in just one kind of situation, so I prepared four modes to match:
- Text translation … the basic form: type it and translate instantly
- Real-time voice … translates what you say right on the spot
- Hands-free … translates a conversation with your phone left on the table, without touching it
- Face-to-face mode … splits the screen top and bottom, with the text on the other person's side flipped 180 degrees. Sitting across a table from each other, you can both read it the right way up
It also includes image translation, which reads and translates menus and signs just by pointing the camera at them, and a feature that reads the translated text aloud in your phone's voice. I finished it so it covers pretty much every situation where you might run into a language barrier.
Who I want it to reach
I especially want these people to use the app:
- Business people who want to use it in place of an interpreter on overseas trips and in negotiations while keeping things confidential
- All travelers journeying through areas with unstable signal
- Shop staff who want to talk with customers from abroad on the shop floor
The basic features are free to use. For those who want to use it more, there's also a ¥500-per-month plan. Start for free, and please experience that "speed of being understood" for yourself.
Finally — what I wanted to say is "anyone can do it now"
I built TransferFriends aiming for "a partner that gets you across the language barrier even without a signal." Nothing would make me happier than if, on your next trip or at your next business meeting, you'd keep it quietly by your side as a small interpreter in your pocket.
But let me repeat it just once more.
What I couldn't achieve in 15 years of paying money can now be done in three weeks, all on your own. This isn't a story only for someone with a special talent. The times have handed the power to make things back into the palm of each and every one of us.
If you, like the old me, "have an idea but have already given up" — please, try just one more time. Your turn is already right in front of you.
▶️ Download on the App Store https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/transferfriends/id6782616187
