Translations??

I guess because japanese player can read both roman characters and their own language, but we can't read both. And we wouldn't be able to call their names, not everyone has a japanese keyboard :P

i use google translator
if i think they are talking to me i copy paste and usethe translator.
one time i thought they were talking about me when they were talking "at" me, felt stupid, but hey im a NA player lol. i do use the translator to talk to them like in stupid stuff. then i get the silly tells in the funny charactors which is always the same, "you can speak JP?" lol

It's probably limited because of programming issues. And if they inteded to release it worldwide from the beginning, then it's also to make it possible to talk to people.
Can you imaging having a regular American trying to type my name in Kanji (even if it's simply hiragana/katakana) without a japanese keyboard, or the knowledge of how to use the IME ?
And also this way it's a lot easier to filter out offensive names :p

(I'd give what Shizukat would be in JP if I made it, but at work atm, and can't type Japanese on this PC)