First off, the name translation. Several karate equipment manufacturers and suppliers provide embroidery services, which are usually fairly good. They also often provide a free (what they call a) name translation. This is where you get your name romanized into a “modern” japanese system made to handle literal translations of words from roman languages. And then again this is converted straight into kana with the relative phonetic sound to the romanji.

There are also plenty of online services providing this service for free, as it is formula based and can be generated on the fly, but the results are not very good because they do not end up sounding like your name if someone able to read the letters would try to read it out loud. For example l’s and r’s have the tendency to be swapped around and Brian ends up sounding Blian because of incompatibilities in western and the japanese phonetics.

Then there is a real magic to japanese words that has gone amiss using this method, especially found in japanese names,  which are combinations of the older kanji characters which themselves have a separate meaning attached to them. An example, my first name “Jon” (A norwegian name, not pronounced as the english John, so don’t use this translation) translates phonetically into 世運. If someone capable would read this out loud it would sound like it’s supposed to.

The first kanji 世 translates into “world” or “age”, and the second 運 translates into “luck” or “fortune” or “chance”. As my full name is compiled I get a combined translation from the kanji’s. My full name (世運殷気) would translate into something like this “world fortune flourishing spirit” and still reads like my roman name! Giving the translation a meaning and personality just like the proper japanese names have.

You will need some help getting your name translated like this, and there is help available. It’s not free but having something like this done properly is worth it I think. I used the services of http://www.japanese-name-translation.com/ which have people in Japan doing this very professionally and my experience working with them was awesome and highly recommended.