changing special charakters to normale text

[gvanaco]

Hello everbody.

I have a database with text. The text contains a lot of special signs like 'é' and 'à'.
I would make an output to XML and use it with a google maps api.
The XML don't like those symbols.

Is there a command or a script where I can convert all my 'special text' to normal text (a-b-c-d-e-f....) before I make the output to XML ?

Thanks for help.

[bpat1434]

[man]strtr/man will work.
[man]str_replace/man will work.