Alexander O. Smith on localizing games for Square

We've heard the horror stories about the conditions under which famous Square translator Ted Woolsey had to work — strictly constrained time and space limits and no feedback from the games' creators, which led to sometimes odd translations. Alexander O. Smith, who localized games for Square including Vagrant Story, shared some anecdotes about his tenure (and subsequent freelance work on games like Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions) that revealed that it wasn't much better for a translator in the PlayStation era.

"We would get a copy of the game," Smith told Gamasutra about working on Final Fantasy VIII, "and we would say, 'Well, what about files?' And they would say, 'Oh, I don't think you need those.' So we all bought Game Sharks." Smith called the situation "very sad." He compared it to Final Fantasy XII, for which the team got full gameplay footage.

The interview covers not just work for Square, but Smith's subsequent move into freelance with Joseph Reeder, and a lot of inside information about the localization work (and surprise musical careers) of both.