Translating from Japanese to English is rather confusing - see the recent movie "Lost in Translation" to get an idea of just how much. FAKE uses many figures of speech, as well as many different styles of talking. English usually doesn't have a feminine style in contrast to a masculine style, where one or two words can be added to make all the difference. For example, Ryo speaks politely (at least, for the majority of the time), in comparison to Bikky's street slang and Dee's arrogance. This requires the translator to attempt to carry over some of the character's style, without making it sound unnatural. In my opinion Tokyopop failed at this terribly when they brought Fake to English audiences, but maybe I'm a little biased. Anyway, this particular website strives to post as accurate a translation as possible. (On a sidenote, this site has been around two years longer than the english translations of the manga, so there are some discrepancies in the translation of names - like Cal/Carol.)

• Ryo and Dee's names are spelled the same, no matter how you translate them.
  
  
• Bikky's name is spelled in katakana as bi-kki-i and pronounced Bikky. I have seen it spelled as 'Vikky', 'Vicky' (v and b are interchangable), 'Bicky', and 'Bikky'. I'm using 'Bikky' because I believe that was Matoh's intent.
  
  
• Cal's name is spelled in katakana as ki-ya-ru, with 'ru' spoken as 'lu'. It is pronounced as Kya-lu with the 'u' dropped. She's often called 'Carol' by the English audience, and Tokyopop used that name when they started translating so that seems the mainstream accepted name now. I spent an entire day debating the 'Cal' / 'Carol' question- the only reason I settled with 'Cal' is because that's what the subtitle people decided on for the OVA, the only branch of Fake-dom translated at the time as Tokyopop was years away from the manga's English release.
  
  
• J.J. is spelled (in English) as JJ so no difficulties carrying it over.
  
  

As I'm no longer offering text translations the other notes on translation have been taken down.

As a final reminder, every translation is different, and not every one perfect. This translation of FAKE is done as accuratly as I can make it, but I can't guarentee excellence. I just finished my third year of Japanese, so I can read most of what I see. However, I'd like to note that I'm not fluent. That does not mean the translations a bunch of bogus- far from it. Just know there may be a handful of mistakes. If you are fluent in Japanese and catch one, please tell me! I'll correct it.

    Enjoy!