def strip_accents_unicode(s):
 normalized = unicodedata.normalize(u'NFKD', s)
 if (normalized == s):
  return s
 else:
  return u''.join([c for c in normalized if (not unicodedata.combining(c))])

def strip_accents_unicode ( s ) : normalized = unicodedata . normalize ( u'NFKD' , s ) if ( normalized == s ) : return s else : return u'' . join ( [ c for c in normalized if ( not unicodedata . combining ( c ) ) ] )
transform accentuated unicode symbols into their simple counterpart warning: the python-level loop and join operations make this implementation 20 times slower than the strip_accents_ascii basic normalization .