title: Python - replace unicode emojis with ASCII characters
body: <p>I have an issue with one of my current weekend projects. I am writing a Python script that fetches some data from different sources and then spits everything out to an esc-pos printer. As you might imagine pos printers don't exactly like emojis...</p>
  
  <p>So text like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>可爱!!!!!!!!
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>gives me this character string:</p>
  
  <pre><code>'\u53ef\u7231!!!!!!!!\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f61d'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The result that comes out of the printer is quite different than what I would like of course. So I need to replace these non-ASCII characters with something else. I don't really care for the first characters, but I do care about emojis. Using something like: <code>unidecode(str(text))</code> will at least strip them out, but I want to convert them to something more useful. Either into classic smilies like [:-D] or into [SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES]. </p>
  
  <p>My problem is... how would one go about doing this? Manually creating a lookup table for most common emojis seems a bit tedious, so I am wondering if there is something else that I can do.</p>