Will this do? Sometimes, plain Python is a good, direct way to handle such things. The below builds a list of translations (easily converted back to a numpy array) and the joined output.
import numpy as np
abc_array = np.array(['B', 'D', 'A', 'F', 'H', 'I', 'Z', 'J'])
transdict = {'A': 'Adelaide',
'B': 'Bombay',
'C': 'Cologne',
'D': 'Dresden',
'E': 'Erlangen',
'F': 'Formosa',
'G': 'Gdansk',
'H': 'Hague',
'I': 'Inchon',
'J': 'Jakarta',
'Z': 'Zambia'
}
phoenetic = [transdict[letter] for letter in abc_array]
print ' '.join(phoenetic)
The output from this is:
Bombay Dresden Adelaide Formosa Hague Inchon Zambia Jakarta