Matching names with non-English characters

Hello:


      How can one match names containing non-English characters that 
appear differently in different but related data files?  For example, I

have data on Ra?l Grijalva, who represents the third district of
Arizona 
in the US House of Representatives.  This first name appears as "Ra??l"

in data read from one file and "Raul" from another.


      The ideal would convert both "Ra??l" and "Ra?l" to "Raul".  A 
reasonable alternative would identify the non-English characters and 
match on everything else ("^Ra" and "l$" in this case).  The files all 
contain state and district, so "AZ-3" could be part of the solution. 
However, the file also contains data on Grijalva's predecessor in that 
office, Ben Quayle, so "AZ-3" is not enough.


      Thanks,
      Spencer


p.s.  My current data contains other similar cases, e.g.:


    Recipient     District
Ra??l Grijalva   AZ House 3
Tony C??rdenas   CA House 29
Linda S??nchez   CA House 38
Ra??l Labrador   ID House 1
Andr?? Carson    IN House 7
Bob Men??ndez    NJ Senate
Ben Ray Luj??n   NM House 3
Jos?? Serrano    NY House 15
Nydia Vel??zquez NY House 7
Rub??n Hinojosa  TX House 15


      These names all appear differently in another file I have. I've 
written an ugly function that can identify "nonstandard characters". 
I'm confident I can solve this problem.  However, I'm adding things
like 
this to the Ecdat package, and it would be more useful for others if I 
made better use of other capabilities in R.