code: def unaccent(string, encoding="utf-8"):
      
      string = to_unicode(string)
      if has_unidecode:
          return unidecode.unidecode(string)
      if PYTHON_VERSION < 3:
          if type(string) == str:
              string = unicode(string, encoding)
          nfkd_form = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', string)
          return u"".join([c for c in nfkd_form if not unicodedata.combining(c)]).encode("ascii", "ignore")
      else:
          return string
docs: not just unaccent, but full to-ascii transliteration