import unicodedata


def _convert_ascii(text):
    """Temporary patch to encode text in ascii.

    Args:
        text (str): Text to convert to ascii encoding.
            any characters cannot be converted to ascii,
            then they are removed.

    Returns:
        str: text converted to ascii.
    """
    text = str(text)
    # Normalize characters and exclude leftovers with accents
    text = ''.join(c for c in unicodedata.normalize(
        'NFKD', text) if unicodedata.category(c) != 'Mn')
    # Remove any leftovers that cannot be normalized
    text = bytes(text, 'ascii', errors='ignore')
    return text.decode("utf-8")