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When translating named entities (for example, a person name), phonetical translation (known as transliteration) is used to make Katakana characters sound like its roman characters equivalent. This allows Japanese speakers who cannot read roman characters, to pronounce correctly named entities.
What is the best way to deal with acronyms? For example:
Version 1 (leave acronym in roman characters): O.J. シンプソン
Version 2 (transliterate everything): オジェ・シンプソン
You mention acronyms but give examples of abbreviations in names. My answer assumes you mean abbreviations.
It's standard to use romaji for the initials in people's names (abbreviations). For example,
As for acronyms, it seems to be a mixture. Well-known acronyms can be used in phonetic forms, but very often they have a more official Japanese version since Japanese people might not understand the meaning of the letters in many English acronyms. Here are some well known English acronyms and their Japanese counterparts:
Of course, there are also acronym loanwords which retained the phonetic rendering, such as UFO (ユーフォー), DVD (ディーブイディー), etc.
Dr. Grill would be ドクターグリル or DRグリル
– Nicolas Bouvrette
Aug 10 '20 at 18:09
