diff --git a/core/includes/common.inc b/core/includes/common.inc
index dece539..13938d3 100644
--- a/core/includes/common.inc
+++ b/core/includes/common.inc
@@ -7435,3 +7435,11 @@ function queue($name, $reliable = FALSE) {
 /**
  * @} End of "defgroup queue".
  */
+
+function transliterate($string, $langcode = NULL, $unknown_character = '?') {
+  if (empty($langcode)) {
+    $langcode = language(LANGUAGE_TYPE_INTERFACE)->langcode;
+  }
+
+  return drupal_container()->get('transliteration')->get($langcode, $unknown_character)->transliterate($string);
+}
diff --git a/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/IcuTransliteration.php b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/IcuTransliteration.php
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed9726f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/IcuTransliteration.php
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+<?php
+
+/**
+ * @file
+ * Definition of Drupal\Component\Transliteration\IcuTransliteration.
+ */
+
+namespace Drupal\Component\Transliteration;
+
+use Transliterator;
+
+/**
+ * Defines a transliteration implementation using the Transliterator class from
+ * the 'intl' extension (available in PECL and bundled with PHP >= 5.4).
+ *
+ * @see http://php.net/manual/en/class.transliterator.php
+ */
+class IcuTransliteration extends Transliteration implements TransliterationInterface {
+
+  /**
+   * Holds a static map of language overrides as an array of strings suitable
+   * for the Transliterator::createFromRules() method.
+   *
+   * @var array
+   */
+  protected static $overrideRules = array();
+
+  /**
+   * Implements TransliterationInterface::transliterate().
+   */
+  public function transliterate($string) {
+    parent::transliterate($string);
+
+    if (empty(self::$overrideRules[$this->langcode])) {
+      foreach (self::$languageOverrides as $langcode => $overrides) {
+        $rule = '';
+        foreach ($overrides as $ord => $override) {
+          $rule .= '\u' . sprintf("%04s", dechex($ord)) . ' > ' . $override . '; ';
+        }
+        self::$overrideRules[$langcode] = $rule;
+      }
+    }
+
+    // Apply the language overrides first.
+    if (isset(self::$overrideRules[$this->langcode])) {
+      $transliterator = Transliterator::createFromRules(self::$overrideRules[$this->langcode]);
+      $string = $transliterator->transliterate($string);
+    }
+
+    // ICU does not have a 'Any-ASCII' transliterator, so we have to go through
+    // Latin first.
+    $transliterator = Transliterator::create("NFD; [:Nonspacing Mark:] Remove; NFC; Any-Latin; Latin-ASCII;");
+    $ascii_string = $transliterator->transliterate($string);
+
+    // @todo Also, the ICU transliterator behaves quite badly when used with the
+    // rule above and it doesn't transliterate some languages (e.g. Amharic).
+    // We need to either somehow map the incoming string to a supported script,
+    // or do something like this:
+//    $transliterator = Transliterator::create("NFD; [:Nonspacing Mark:] Remove; NFC;
+//     Amharic-Latin/BGN; Arabic-Latin/BGN; Armenian-Latin/BGN;
+//     Azerbaijani-Latin/BGN; Belarusian-Latin/BGN; Bengali-Latin;
+//     Bulgarian-Latin/BGN; Cyrillic-Latin; Devanagari-Latin; Georgian-Latin/BGN;
+//     Greek-Latin/BGN; Gujarati-Latin; Gurmukhi-Latin; Han-Latin; Hangul-Latin;
+//     Hebrew-Latin/BGN; Hiragana-Latin; Jamo-Latin; JapaneseKana-Latin/BGN;
+//     Kannada-Latin; Katakana-Latin; Kazakh-Latin/BGN; Kirghiz-Latin/BGN;
+//     Korean-Latin/BGN; Macedonian-Latin/BGN; Malayalam-Latin; Maldivian-Latin/BGN;
+//     Mongolian-Latin/BGN; NumericPinyin-Latin; Oriya-Latin; Pashto-Latin/BGN;
+//     Persian-Latin/BGN; Russian-Latin/BGN; Serbian-Latin/BGN; Syriac-Latin;
+//     Tamil-Latin; Telugu-Latin; Thaana-Latin; Thai-Latin; Turkmen-Latin/BGN;
+//     Ukrainian-Latin/BGN; Uzbek-Latin/BGN; Any-Latin; Latin-ASCII;");
+
+    return $ascii_string;
+  }
+}
diff --git a/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/PhpTransliteration.php b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/PhpTransliteration.php
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fdd02a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/PhpTransliteration.php
@@ -0,0 +1,181 @@
+<?php
+
+/**
+ * @file
+ * Definition of Drupal\Component\Transliteration\PhpTransliteration.
+ */
+
+namespace Drupal\Component\Transliteration;
+
+/**
+ * Defines a transliteration implementation for PHP < 5.4.
+ */
+class PhpTransliteration extends Transliteration implements TransliterationInterface {
+
+  /**
+   * Overrides Drupal\Component\Transliteration\Transliteration::transliterate().
+   */
+  public function transliterate($string) {
+    parent::transliterate($string);
+
+    static $tail_bytes;
+
+    if (!isset($tail_bytes)) {
+      // Each UTF-8 head byte is followed by a certain number of tail bytes.
+      $tail_bytes = array();
+      for ($n = 0; $n < 256; $n++) {
+        if ($n < 0xc0) {
+          $remaining = 0;
+        }
+        elseif ($n < 0xe0) {
+          $remaining = 1;
+        }
+        elseif ($n < 0xf0) {
+          $remaining = 2;
+        }
+        elseif ($n < 0xf8) {
+          $remaining = 3;
+        }
+        elseif ($n < 0xfc) {
+          $remaining = 4;
+        }
+        elseif ($n < 0xfe) {
+          $remaining = 5;
+        }
+        else {
+          $remaining = 0;
+        }
+        $tail_bytes[chr($n)] = $remaining;
+      }
+    }
+
+    // Chop the text into pure-ASCII and non-ASCII areas; large ASCII parts can
+    // be handled much more quickly. Don't chop up Unicode areas for punctuation,
+    // though, that wastes energy.
+    preg_match_all('/[\x00-\x7f]+|[\x80-\xff][\x00-\x40\x5b-\x5f\x7b-\xff]*/', $string, $matches);
+
+    $result = '';
+    foreach ($matches[0] as $str) {
+      if ($str[0] < "\x80") {
+        // ASCII chunk: guaranteed to be valid UTF-8 and in normal form C, so
+        // skip over it.
+        $result .= $str;
+        continue;
+      }
+
+      // We'll have to examine the chunk byte by byte to ensure that it consists
+      // of valid UTF-8 sequences, and to see if any of them might not be
+      // normalized.
+      // Since PHP is not the fastest language on earth, some of this code is a
+      // little ugly with inner loop optimizations.
+      $head = '';
+      $chunk = strlen($str);
+      // Counting down is faster. I'm *so* sorry.
+      $len = $chunk + 1;
+
+      for ($i = -1; --$len; ) {
+        $c = $str[++$i];
+        if ($remaining = $tail_bytes[$c]) {
+          // UTF-8 head byte!
+          $sequence = $head = $c;
+          do {
+            // Look for the defined number of tail bytes...
+            if (--$len && ($c = $str[++$i]) >= "\x80" && $c < "\xc0") {
+              // Legal tail bytes are nice.
+              $sequence .= $c;
+            }
+            else {
+              if ($len == 0) {
+                // Premature end of string! Drop a replacement character into
+                // output to represent the invalid UTF-8 sequence.
+                $result .= $this->unknownCharacter;
+                break 2;
+              }
+              else {
+                // Illegal tail byte; abandon the sequence.
+                $result .= $this->unknownCharacter;
+                // Back up and reprocess this byte; it may itself be a legal
+                // ASCII or UTF-8 sequence head.
+                --$i;
+                ++$len;
+                continue 2;
+              }
+            }
+          } while (--$remaining);
+
+          $n = ord($head);
+          if ($n <= 0xdf) {
+            $ord = ($n - 192) * 64 + (ord($sequence[1]) - 128);
+          }
+          elseif ($n <= 0xef) {
+            $ord = ($n - 224) * 4096 + (ord($sequence[1]) - 128) * 64 + (ord($sequence[2]) - 128);
+          }
+          elseif ($n <= 0xf7) {
+            $ord = ($n - 240) * 262144 + (ord($sequence[1]) - 128) * 4096 + (ord($sequence[2]) - 128) * 64 + (ord($sequence[3]) - 128);
+          }
+          elseif ($n <= 0xfb) {
+            $ord = ($n - 248) * 16777216 + (ord($sequence[1]) - 128) * 262144 + (ord($sequence[2]) - 128) * 4096 + (ord($sequence[3]) - 128) * 64 + (ord($sequence[4]) - 128);
+          }
+          elseif ($n <= 0xfd) {
+            $ord = ($n - 252) * 1073741824 + (ord($sequence[1]) - 128) * 16777216 + (ord($sequence[2]) - 128) * 262144 + (ord($sequence[3]) - 128) * 4096 + (ord($sequence[4]) - 128) * 64 + (ord($sequence[5]) - 128);
+          }
+          $result .= $this->replace($ord);
+          $head = '';
+        }
+        elseif ($c < "\x80") {
+          // ASCII byte.
+          $result .= $c;
+          $head = '';
+        }
+        elseif ($c < "\xc0") {
+          // Illegal tail bytes.
+          if ($head == '') {
+            $result .= $this->unknownCharacter;
+          }
+        }
+        else {
+          // Miscellaneous freaks.
+          $result .= $this->unknownCharacter;
+          $head = '';
+        }
+      }
+    }
+
+    return $result;
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Replaces a Unicode character using the transliteration database.
+   *
+   * @param int $ord
+   *   An ordinal Unicode character code.
+   *
+   * @return string
+   *   ASCII replacement character.
+   */
+  protected function replace($ord) {
+    // Bail out early if this character is in the overrides table.
+    if (isset(self::$languageOverrides[$this->langcode][$ord])) {
+      return self::$languageOverrides[$this->langcode][$ord];
+    }
+
+    static $map = array();
+
+    $bank = $ord >> 8;
+
+    if (!isset($map[$bank][$this->langcode])) {
+      $file = $this->dataDirectory . '/' . sprintf('x%02x', $bank) . '.php';
+      if (file_exists($file)) {
+        include $file;
+        $map[$bank][$this->langcode] = $base;
+      }
+      else {
+        $map[$bank][$this->langcode] = array();
+      }
+    }
+
+    $ord = $ord & 255;
+
+    return isset($map[$bank][$this->langcode][$ord]) ? $map[$bank][$this->langcode][$ord] : $this->unknownCharacter;
+  }
+}
diff --git a/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/Transliteration.php b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/Transliteration.php
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c8d2bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/Transliteration.php
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+<?php
+
+/**
+ * @file
+ * Definition of Drupal\Component\Transliteration\Transliteration.
+ */
+
+namespace Drupal\Component\Transliteration;
+
+/**
+ * Base class for transliteration implementations.
+ */
+abstract class Transliteration implements TransliterationInterface {
+
+  protected $langcode;
+  protected $unknownCharacter;
+  protected $dataDirectory;
+  protected static $languageOverrides = array();
+
+  /**
+   * Instantiates the correct transliteration object.
+   */
+  public function __construct($langcode = 'en', $unknown_character = '?') {
+    $this->langcode = $langcode;
+    $this->unknownCharacter = $unknown_character;
+
+    $this->dataDirectory = dirname(__FILE__) . '/data';
+
+    // Initialize the language overrides in the base class so all available
+    // implementations can take them into consideration.
+    if (empty(self::$languageOverrides)) {
+      include $this->dataDirectory . '/language_overrides.php';
+      self::$languageOverrides = $overrides;
+    }
+  }
+
+  /**
+   * Implements Drupal\Component\Transliteration\TransliterationInterface::transliterate().
+   */
+  public function transliterate($string) {
+    // ASCII is always valid NFC! If we're only ever given plain ASCII, we can
+    // avoid the overhead of initializing the decomposition tables or
+    // Transliterator objects by skipping out early.
+    if (!preg_match('/[\x80-\xff]/', $string)) {
+      return $string;
+    }
+  }
+}
diff --git a/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/TransliterationFactory.php b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/TransliterationFactory.php
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c191a9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/TransliterationFactory.php
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+<?php
+
+/**
+ * @file
+ * Definition of Drupal\Component\Transliteration\TransliterationFactory.
+ */
+
+namespace Drupal\Component\Transliteration;
+
+/**
+ * Factory class for transliterations.
+ *
+ * Determines which transliteration implementation to use based on the PHP
+ * version and available extensions.
+ */
+class TransliterationFactory {
+
+  /**
+   * Returns a configuration object for a given string.
+   *
+   * @return Drupal\Component\Transliteration\Transliteration
+   *   A transliteration object with the given $string.
+   */
+  public function get($langcode, $unknown_character) {
+    static $class;
+
+    if (empty($class)) {
+      $class = 'Drupal\Component\Transliteration\PhpTransliteration';
+
+      // If we have the 'intl' extension available and PHP 5.4 or the PECL
+      // version >= 2.0.0, use the native ICU implementation.
+      if (extension_loaded('intl')
+          && (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.4.0', '>=') || version_compare(phpversion('intl'), '2.0.0', '>='))) {
+        $class = 'Drupal\Component\Transliteration\IcuTransliteration';
+      }
+    }
+
+    return new $class($langcode, $unknown_character);
+  }
+}
diff --git a/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/TransliterationInterface.php b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/TransliterationInterface.php
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc64749
--- /dev/null
+++ b/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Transliteration/TransliterationInterface.php
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+<?php
+
+/**
+ * @file
+ * Definition of Drupal\Component\Transliteration\TransliterationInterface.
+ */
+
+namespace Drupal\Component\Transliteration;
+
+/**
+ * Defines the common interface for all Transliteration classes.
+ */
+interface TransliterationInterface {
+
+  /**
+   * Transliterates a string.
+   *
+   * @param string $string
+   *   The string that will be transliterated.
+   *
+   * @return string
+   *   The transliterated string, represented in US-ASCII characters.
+   */
+  public function transliterate($string);
+}
diff --git a/core/lib/Drupal/Core/CoreBundle.php b/core/lib/Drupal/Core/CoreBundle.php
index 2c5d180..8b777e7 100644
--- a/core/lib/Drupal/Core/CoreBundle.php
+++ b/core/lib/Drupal/Core/CoreBundle.php
@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@ class CoreBundle extends Bundle
       ->setFactoryClass('Drupal\Core\Database\Database')
       ->setFactoryMethod('getConnection')
       ->addArgument('slave');
+    $container->register('transliteration', 'Drupal\Component\Transliteration\TransliterationFactory');
 
     // @todo Replace below lines with the commented out block below it when it's
     //   performant to do so: http://drupal.org/node/1706064.