I am applying for a language course in Tokyo, and the application form requires me to input my name in katakana as well. My first name is easy to transcribe, but being an Eastern European, my surname contains some parts which can be hard to write in katakana. One of them is something similar to "tsa" sound (well, not really, but the other alternative is "ka" or "za" and those two sound even more off). I know that one can get the ツァ form - but can I use it in a formal document? I have never seen it used in real life, except for those learning sheets. Or is it better to kill the right pronunciation (even English speakers cannot guess it from the spelling) and just go with カ or ザ?
Thank you, everyone!

I do. I use ジェ for my name

I was told to use ファ in my name, but I think that's pretty common now; don't know about ツァ.

As a bit of a side topic: how does Japan deal with official aliases? I've heard several foreigners say that, among friends, they used a Japanese name or one that's easier for Japanese to pronounce; is there an easy way to apply that to official papers and such?
I don't need to act on this information, I'm just curious, in case I ever go for something where using an alias would make things easier.

The small ァ is part of modern written Japanese, unlike ㇰ, ㇷ゚, ト゜ and other characters that are only used in some versions of written Ainu (the outdated characters ヱ and ヰ are borderline cases, since they do get used in brand names and certain other limited contexts, but generally aren't used in modern transliterations). The word "Tsar" is transliterated into Japanese as ツァーリ, and there are proper names that feature this kana combination in Japanese (ポドゴリツァ, ボルツァーノ, ツァルナエフ, etc.). So there shouldn't be any problem with using it on official documents.

sholum Wrote:As a bit of a side topic: how does Japan deal with official aliases? I've heard several foreigners say that, among friends, they used a Japanese name or one that's easier for Japanese to pronounce; is there an easy way to apply that to official papers and such?
I don't need to act on this information, I'm just curious, in case I ever go for something where using an alias would make things easier.

I had only heard of Zainichi Koreans using legal aliases (it's one of the "Zainichi priviliges" that folks like the Zaitokukai despise them for), but if Wikipedia is to be believed other legal aliens [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_registration_in_Japan#Legal_alias]can qualify for them as wellhttp://. There's a [url=http://allabout....about this in the links on the bottom, although it's apparently almost nine years old, so things might have changed since then.