[Python] Special text to latin characters in python

I have the following pandas data frame:

the_df = pd.DataFrame({'id':[1,2],'name':['Joe','']})
the_df
id name
0 1 Joe
1 2


As you can see, we can read the second name as "Sarah", but it's written with special characters.

I want to create a new column with these characters converted to latin characters. I have tried this approach:

the_df['latin_name'] = the_df['name'].str.extract(r'(^[a-zA-Z\s]*)')
the_df
id name latin_name
0 1 Joe Joe
1 2


But it doesn't recognize the letters. Please, any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

Continue reading...