I started figuring out that I wanted to work in localization before I even knew what it was: it was 1998, I was 6 years old, and I was playing Pokemon Yellow Version on my purple GameBoy Color. This text-heavy game was rapidly improving my ability to read. I was fascinated with the franchise, I was learning about where it came from in Japan, and I was discovering what it really meant to speak another language. Eventually I'd grow up to play more Pokemon games in Japanese, French, and Spanish.

Fast-forwarding to my professional career, I shipped Swapmeat on Steam, localized in 6 languages. Swapmeat is the project that solidified localization as the piece I really want to work on — figuring out how a game, a campaign, or a tool holds up when it's no longer just built for one language or one market. I like the technical side of that problem as much as the human side: the pipelines and automation that make it scalable, and the judgment calls that keep it feeling natural instead of translated. That's the kind of work I'm looking to keep doing.