code: def convert_to_ascii(statement):
      
      import unicodedata
  
      text = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', statement.text)
      text = text.encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode('utf-8')
  
      statement.text = str(text)
      return statement
docs: Converts unicode characters to ASCII character equivalents.
      For example: "på fédéral" becomes "pa federal".