A portion of a GSW interview with Alexander O. Smith and Joseph Reeder, two men that have translated a number of Square-Enix titles...

GSW: You've both worked on a number of the same Square Enix game localizations, but how long have you been collaborating in this company?

JR: We’ve been working together on Kajiya Productions for just over a year now. July 31st of last year I left Square and moved to the United States.

AOS: I started it as an idea back when I was working at Square. It was a known secret that I was working for other companies at the time, just doing editing work and other stuff like that. I knew that I would eventually go freelance, and it’s very beneficial to actually have contacts outside of the company when you do break out.

It was also brought on by the development schedule. When I arrived at Square we would have half a year of intense work, working nineteen-hour days, and half a year of doing nothing. There just were not that many games, especially before the Square-Enix merger. We actually had too many localizers.

JR: Since you don’t have control over exactly when the Japanese is going to be at a point where they can assign someone to translate it, inevitably you get these really long downtimes.

AOS: Because I couldn’t list my name on the credits when I edited The Misadventures of Tron Bonne. I signed my name as AO Kajiya: My first two initials, plus "Kajiya" which is "blacksmith" in Japanese.