Katakana is used in translating names from any foreign language, except that:

(a) Chinese names are almost always translated into the Japanese transliteration of the Chinese characters -- Mao Zedong becomes "Mo Takuto." This can be confusing as hell sometimes, e.g. when a person named "Huang" is called "Ko-san" in Japanese. (Or sometimes it's just funny -- recently I have been working with a lawyer named Xiong, whose name is the Chinese character for "bear;" my Japanese coworkers refer to her as "Kuma-sensei" using the Japanese word for "bear.") There is usually no hint as to the original Chinese pronunciation; they just use the characters (which are not phonetic) as-is.

(b) Korean names are usually written in Chinese characters but pronounced using a katakana version of the Korean pronunciation. This is not as consistent, and sometimes you will see the Japanese readings of the characters used instead (for example, everyone used to call Kim Jong-il "Kimu Shonichi"). Sometimes they write Korean names in katakana and skip the Chinese characters entirely.

But if your name is Arabic, Thai, Hindi or whatever, it will be transliterated in katakana.