Python: replace french letters with english

Question

I would like to replace all the french letters within words with their ASCII equivalent.

letters = [['é', 'à'], ['è', 'ù'], ['â', 'ê'], ['î', 'ô'], ['û', 'ç']]

for x in letters:
   for a in x:
        a = a.replace('é', 'e')
        a = a.replace('à', 'a')
        a = a.replace('è', 'e')
        a = a.replace('ù', 'u')
        a = a.replace('â', 'a')
        a = a.replace('ê', 'e')
        a = a.replace('î', 'i')
        a = a.replace('ô', 'o')
        a = a.replace('û', 'u')
        a = a.replace('ç', 'c')

print(letters[0][0])

This code prints é however. How can I make this work?

score 31 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 06 '16 at 21:19

31

May I suggest you consider using translation tables.

translationTable = str.maketrans("éàèùâêîôûç", "eaeuaeiouc")

test = "Héllô Càèùverâêt Jîôûç"
test = test.translate(translationTable)
print(test)

will print Hello Caeuveraet Jiouc. Pardon my French.

answered Dec 06 '16 at 21:19

logan rakai

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6

your french is bad, but your knowledge of python is good. and it's probably the fastest performance-wise. – Jean-François Fabre Dec 06 '16 at 21:24
Is that the complete list? – Nabin Oct 21 '22 at 11:18

vvvvv · Answer 2 · 2022-03-10T14:57:55.407

20

You can also use unidecode. Install it: pip install unidecode.
Then, do:

from unidecode import unidecode

s = "Héllô Càèùverâêt Jîôûç ïîäüë"
s = unidecode(s)
print(s)  # Hello Caeuveraet Jiouc iiaue

The result will be the same string, but the french characters will be converted to their ASCII equivalent: Hello Caeuveraet Jiouc iiaue

edited Mar 10 '22 at 14:57

answered Apr 05 '18 at 14:19

vvvvv

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score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 30 '23 at 12:53

3

The replace function returns the string with the character replaced.

In your code you don't store this return value.

The lines in your loop should be a = a.replace('é', 'e').

You also need to store that output so you can print it in the end.

This post explains how variables within loops are accessed.

edited Jan 30 '23 at 12:53

vvvvv

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answered Dec 06 '16 at 21:11

mimre

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This won't work. `letters` will not be mutated by simply assigning the result of `replace` to `a` – juanpa.arrivillaga Dec 06 '16 at 21:14
1

That's why I added the last sentence, the "a" is a copy of the value in in x (which is a copy of the value in letters). Those loops are not passing a reference – mimre Dec 06 '16 at 21:14
1

No, they are not copies. That is *certainly not* how Python works. – juanpa.arrivillaga Dec 06 '16 at 21:18

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 30 '23 at 12:54

Although I am new to Python, I would approach it this way:

letterXchange = {'à':'a', 'â':'a', 'ä':'a', 'é':'e', 'è':'e', 'ê':'e', 'ë':'e',
    'î':'i', 'ï':'i', 'ô':'o', 'ö':'o', 'ù':'u', 'û':'u', 'ü':'u', 'ç':'c'}
text = input() # Replace it with the string in your code.
for item in list(text):
    if item in letterXchange:
        text = text.replace(item,letterXchange.get(str(item)))
    else:
        pass
print(text)

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 30 '23 at 12:54

Here is another solution, using the low level unicode package called unicodedata.

In the unicode structure, a character like 'ô' is actually a composite character, made of the character 'o' and another character called 'COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT', which is basically the '̀'. Using the method decomposition in unicodedata, one can obtain the unicodes (in hex) of these two parts.

>>> import unicodedata as ud
>>> ud.decomposition('ù')
'0075 0300'
>>> chr(0x0075)
'u'
>>> >>> chr(0x0300)
'̀'

Therefore, to retrieve 'u' from 'ù', we can first do a string split, then use the built-in int function for the conversion(see this thread for converting a hex string to an integer), and then get the character using chr function.

import unicodedata as ud

def get_ascii_char(c):
    s = ud.decomposition(c)
    if s == '': # for an indecomposable character, it returns ''
        return c
    code = int('0x' + s.split()[0], 0)
    return chr(code)

Python: replace french letters with english

5 Answers5