diff --git a/scripts/geodata/i18n/normalize.py b/scripts/geodata/i18n/normalize.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..04c885b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scripts/geodata/i18n/normalize.py
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+import unicodedata
+
+
+def strip_accents(s):
+    return u''.join([c for c in unicodedata.normalize('NFD', s) if unicodedata.category(c) != 'Mn'])