i use this all the time to convert plaintext into something festival text to speech package can understand

demum-ex-stercore

#!/usr/bin/env python                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
# coding=UTF-8

import os, sys, tempfile

for file in sys.argv[1:]:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
    f = open(file)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
    fs = f.read()
    r1 = fs.replace('\n',' ')
    r2 = r1.replace('\r',' ')                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
    r3 = r2.replace('. ','.\n\n')                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
    r4 = r3.replace('é','e')
    r5 = r4.replace('\xc2',' ')
    r6 = r5.replace('\xa0',' ')
    r7 = r6.replace(' ',' ')
    r8 = r7.replace(' ',' ')
    r9 = r8.replace('\n ','\n')
    f.close()                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
    print r8