def shoehorn_unicode_into_ascii(s):
    return unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', s).encode('ascii', 'ignore')
if __name__ == '__main__':
    s = '\xe9\xe8\xea\xe0\xf9\xe7\xc7'
print(shoehorn_unicode_into_ascii(s))
What's the fastest way to strip and replace a document of high unicode characters using Python?