The translator responsible for making sure many of
Squaresoft's greatest
games made it to the US intact. Ted became interested in the
Japanese language and
culture while taking
martial arts as a child and early teen. He received his
Master's degree in Japanese literature at the
University of Washington in
Seattle. His first son was born while he was working on his
dissertation, and he decided to drop that and look for work so that he could spend more time with his son.
Square was hiring, and
the rest is history.
The following Square games were all translated by Ted:
Final Fantasy Legend III
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
Final Fantasy III (US version of Final Fantasy VI)
Breath of Fire
Secret of Mana
Chrono Trigger
Super Mario RPG
Ted has stated in interviews that the hardest part was dealing with the fact that English as a language is much less dense than Japanese, and since the size of the cartridges was fixed, this meant that a number of things (sometimes up to 50% of the text) had to be dropped from each game during the translation.
Ted's genius is such that despite all of these setbacks, all of these games created convincing characters and told their stories well. Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger in particular are cult favorites here in the US.
When the Redmond offices of Squaresoft were disbanded, Ted joined with some other ex-Square employees to form Big Rain Software. Big Rain was eventually bought by Crave Entertainment, where Ted worked as a designer and producer. He is currently (as of early 2001) working for Moby Games as a producer.