Thread:ShadowRyu Kei/@comment-27090820-20151107074709/@comment-25942629-20151109014339

The Katakana is there, but the spelling can still vary. L and R are interchangeable in Japanese, and direct translations of the Katakana puts vowels after every consonant. "Waldo" would probably be something like "warudo," for example. The spelling isn't directly interchangeable with English letters. This is how the Krul/Kururu, Ferid/Felid, Guren/Glen, Yu/Yuu and et cetera issues came about. Krul could also be Kurulu or Kuluru, and Ferid could be Felido or Ferido. Coming straight from Katakana, all of those spellings could be considered techinically correct but only one is the chosen officially correct spelling.

Katakana is used for non-Japanese words and names, such as "computer" or "Mikaela." Kanji is based on Chinese characters and come sometimes be read in a multitude of different ways and even have different meanings. Japanese names are typically in Kanji.