rename multiple mp3 filenames from greek to english with bash script - bash

Question

I have dozens of mp3 files where the filename contains Greek letters. I would like to rename them to "latin only characters" so that the title etc. is displayed correctly on all common playback devices.
It takes a long time to do this manually, so I need your help.
Is there a simple bash script that can do this job?
as example:
I want the script to rename the file from σαγαπώ.mp3 to sagapo.mp3
edit://
I was now able to rename the file name with a python script.
Of:
Βασίλης Μπατής - Ζημιά _ Vasilis Mpatis - Zimia _ Official Video Clip HQ 2017.mp3
would:
Basilis Mpatis - Zimia _ Vasilis Mpatis - Zimia _ Official Video Clip HQ 2017.mp3
So far so good, now the question is how do I get rid of all "unnecessary" information from the file name, so that in the end only the artist and title remain as file names.
This is what the file name should look like at the end.
Basilis Mpatis - Zimia.mp3
Anyone an idea?
Here is my Python script:
import os
# Pfad zum Ordner mit den MP3-Dateien
path = '/home/sakis/mp3'
# Alle MP3-Dateien im Ordner durchlaufen
for file in os.listdir(path):
if file.endswith('.mp3'):
# Aktuellen Dateinamen speichern und in Unicode umwandeln
old_name = file.encode('utf-8').decode('utf-8')
# Dateinamen in zwei Teile trennen
name, extension = old_name.rsplit('.', 1)
# Griechische Buchstaben im Dateinamen ersetzen
new_name = old_name.replace('Ά', 'A').replace('Έ', 'E').replace('Ή', 'H').replace('Ί', 'I').replace('Ό', 'O').replace('Ύ', 'Y').replace('Ώ', 'W').replace('ΐ', 'I').replace('Α', 'A').replace('Β', 'B').replace('Γ', 'G').replace('Δ', 'D').replace('Ε', 'E').replace('Ζ', 'Z').replace('Η', 'H').replace('Θ', 'TH').replace('Ι', 'I').replace('Κ', 'K').replace('Λ', 'L').replace('Μ', 'M').replace('Ν', 'N').replace('Ξ', 'X').replace('Ο', 'O').replace('Π', 'P').replace('Ρ', 'R').replace('Σ', 'S').replace('Τ', 'T').replace('Υ', 'Y').replace('Φ', 'F').replace('Χ', 'X').replace('Ψ', 'PS').replace('Ω', 'O').replace('ά', 'a').replace('έ', 'e').replace('ή', 'i').replace('ί', 'i').replace('ό', 'o').replace('ύ', 'y').replace('ώ', 'w').replace('ϊ', 'i').replace('ϋ', 'u').replace('ό', 'o').replace('α', 'a').replace('β', 'b').replace('γ', 'g').replace('δ', 'd').replace('ε', 'e').replace('ζ', 'z').replace('η', 'i').replace('θ', 'th').replace('ι', 'i').replace('κ', 'k').replace('λ', 'l').replace('μ', 'm').replace('ν', 'n').replace('ξ', 'x').replace('ο', 'o').replace('π', 'p').replace('ρ', 'r').replace('ς', 's').replace('σ', 's').replace('τ', 't').replace('υ', 'y').replace('φ', 'f').replace('χ', 'x').replace('ψ', 'ps').replace('ω', 'o')
# Alle weiteren Zeichen im Dateinamen entfernen
name = ''.join(c for c in name if c.isalnum() or c in [' ', '-', '_'])
# Neuen Dateinamen setzen
os.rename(os.path.join(path, old_name), os.path.join(path, new_name))
print('Done!')

Answer 1

You need to define your own tranlsation table, because nobody can guess how you want to translate the names. Assume that the greek name is stored in variable greek_name, something like this could do:
english_name=$(tr αβΓγΔδεΖζ... avGgDdeZz... $greek_name)
Of course you have to make compromises: Since for instance the letter υ can be pronounced as "i", "f" or as "w" depending on the context, you have to settle for one.
Another problem is that several greek letters are pronounced the same; for instance, Ο and Ω. If you don't manage to map them uniquely, it might happen that two greek file names map to the same english file name. Therefore, when you do the renaming, make sure that you get at least an error message in this case:
if ! mv -n "$greek_name" "$english_name"
then
echo Can not rename "$greek_name", because "$english_name" already exists
fi
UPDATE:
It's not clear how you would translate i.e. ψ, as the most natural mapping would be to use two charcaters, "ps". You could either use an english letter which has no equivalent in Greek anyway ('c' comes to my mind), or you translate these special cases in a separate step, for instance:
# english_name could still contain a ψ because this
# was not handled by `tr`
english_name=${english_name//ψ/ps}
You have of course make up your mind whether you want the upper case Ψ being translated into PS or Ps.
You have not specified how you want to use in translation the English letter b. In Greek, this sound is written as νπ, i.e. two Greek letters map to a single English one. If you want to implement this mapping, you have to do it before the one-to-one translation done by tr, for instance:
# Already preprocess νπ before translating the other
# Greek letters:
greek_name=${greek_name//νπ/b}
greek_name=${greek_name//Ν[πΠ]/B}
This reflects the idea that a Greek word starting with Νπ is meant to be a word starting with an upper case letter, and ΝΠ is meant to start an all-upper-case word, both corresponding to an upper-case B in English.