Foreign language characters for folder names?

[vaaaska]

I just don't know how to handle this issue. If a person enters an é or perhaps even a Chinese character for the name of a folder (being created by a folder creation tool) is there some way to efficiently change said character into a roman-based character?

Certainly, I could try to write a replace function that had every imaginable character that would not work in the name of a folder, but I'm wondering if there is a more simple approach...

???

Thanks, v