String Anglicization?

Question

Is anyone aware of any simple way to anglicize a string? Currently, in our system, we're doing replacements on "invalid" characters, such as shown below:

        ret = ret.Replace("ä", "ae");
        ret = ret.Replace("Ä", "Ae");
        ret = ret.Replace("ß", "ss");
        ret = ret.Replace("ç", "c");
        ret = ret.Replace("Ç", "C");
        ret = ret.Replace("Ž", "Z");

The issue here is that as we're opening the business up in additional countries (Turkey, Russia, Hungary...), we're finding that there's a whole slew of characters that this process does not convert.

Is anyone aware of any sort of solution that would allow us to not depend on a table of "invalid" characters?

Also, if it helps, we're using C# to code. :)

Thanks!

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edit:

In response to some comments, our system does support the full set of unicode characters... however, other system that we integrate to (such as card processors) do not. :(

Answer 1

Check out this question and its answers and take a look at this blog entry on converting diacritical characters to their ASCII equivalents.

Answer 2

Just because a letter looks similar to a traditional English letter does not make it equivalent. What is the business case for not just supporting Unicode and any characters your audience chooses to use?

Answer 3

As an answer to the modified problem (mail server supports only alphanumeric characters in usernames):

Let the users choose their own usernames, allowing only alphanumeric characters. They probably know best how to "anglicize" it.