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I want to know the trick to transliterating names in to Japanese.

I previously asked this question and it was suggested to look up famous names.

That worked until I came up on one of my friend's last name, which is
`Cobaxin`.

I couldn't find anyone famous/popular with that last name.

Is there a set of rules to follow when transliterating names into Japanese
Katakana?

I wouldn't like to bother you guys for every single name that I can't figure
out :P

P.S:

The origin of the name is Spanish so in Spanish it's pronounced `ko-ba-kzeen`.

However in English it's pronounced `ko-ba-kzen`.

I'm thinking it's somewhere in between コバクゼン or コバクゼィン. What do you guys
think?
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translation
Transliterating the last name Cobaxin
There is no "correct" way. With some names there has become a standard way,
such as スミス for Smith. In these circumstances the transition from foreign
pronunciation is pretty straight forward.

> The "u" in スミ is dropped in most pronunciations of the word making it
> similar to Sm and there is no closer way to represent this sound.
>
> mi => ミ is straight forward.
>
> ス is the closest approximation of the ending "th" sound in Japanese.

But for other names that are uncommon (i.e. if there's multiple katakana
renditions of the word most likely almost no one would notice) then it comes
down to coming up with a valid approximation.

Take the name Brekke.

> Br => ブレ this is natural because again the "u" sound is dropped and the "re"
> is close to レ and the same when displayed using romaji.
>
> The hard part is how to end the word. If you follow the romaji and use
> ブレッケー, which an acquaintance of mine had done by a company in Japan.
> However, the pronunciation of the name is closer to ブレッキー.

In this case, which is the "correct" version? Neither and both.
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Usually, words are transcribed based on how they sound--or how it is imagined
that they'd sound, since many words are borrowed into Japanese via print and
aren't actually heard.

  1. A Spanish-speaking friend offers /ko'βaksin/ as an [IPA transcription](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa) of _Cobaxin_. Based on that, I think you can straightforwardly transcribe the Spanish version of the name in Japanese as コバクシン, replacing the consonants with their closest equivalents and adding the [epenthetic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis) vowel /u/. 

The vowel /u/ is the most common epenthetic vowel in Japanese and is usually
the default choice after consonants other than /t/ and /d/. After these two
consonants, adding /o/ is most common.

These vowels are added when you need to break up an illegal consonant cluster.
Consider the English word _strength_ :

> ストレングス /sutoreɴgusu/

Here, English _strength_ /strɛŋθ/ has the consonant cluster /str/, which is
not possible in Japanese, so vowels are inserted to break it up, resulting in
/sutor/. (However, since the English has no /g/ sound in most dialects, we can
guess that this transcription was made from an imagined pronunciation based on
spelling. This is often the case.) As you can see, /u/ is added in each case,
except after /t/, where /o/ is inserted instead.

Generally speaking, you can get pretty far by adding these two vowels whenever
necessary. But giving a complete set of rules for transcription is probably
beyond the scope of a single answer, I'm afraid; I'll focus on _Cobaxin_ for
the rest of this answer.

  2. You indicate that in English the final vowel of _Cobaxin_ is more like /e/ than /i/. If that's correct, then I think you could write コバクセン instead.

  3. In your transcription, you've written `z` rather than `s`. If you think this is more accurate, then コバクジン or コバクゼン would be fine, again depending on the final vowel.

  4. If you intend to write /si/ or /zi/, I would stick to the standard シ／ジ rather than write セィ／ゼィ or スィ／ズィ. 

I don't think Japanese speakers usually distinguish [si] from [ɕi] or [zi]
from [ʑi], so there isn't a lot of use in distinguishing a "straight" /s/ or
/z/ from the [allophone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophone) that usually
occurs before /i/. If you did write it with the less usual katakana
combinations, I don't think people would pronounce it the way you intend very
often.

So, depending on how you think the `s` and `i` should be pronounced:

コバクシン・コバクセン  
コバクジン・コバクゼン

I would use one of those.
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answer