He currently resides in Kamakura, Japan, where he operates his own contract localization business, Kajiya Productions, and is co-founder of a translation and publishing company, Bento Books.

[4] Smith joined Square after earning his master's degree, working as part of Richard Honeywood's nascent localization team.

On his first project, Final Fantasy VIII, he and the other translators were not given access to the game files; they were instead forced to hack in their new dialogue using GameSharks during testing.

[1][9] By working as a contractor, he found that he had better access to the development team to aid in his translation process, free from the fetters of corporate communication protocols.

[1] In 2005, during the protracted development of Final Fantasy XII, Capcom hired Smith to work on the localization of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

[10] Smith joined the Final Fantasy XII project after Yasumi Matsuno, the original director, had left and was not able to collaborate on the script with him directly, unlike with Vagrant Story.

[11] Smith worked with Matsuno again on the 2011 PlayStation Portable remake of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (titled Wheel of Fortune), which received a brand new translation.

[13] For both of these titles, Smith relied on Matsuno's dense notes on the world's backstory to capture subtle and implied connections and preserve the rich texture of the game.