diff --git a/utils/text/__init__.py b/utils/text/__init__.py
index f857de4a..35e8713b 100644
--- a/utils/text/__init__.py
+++ b/utils/text/__init__.py
@@ -67,6 +67,18 @@ def sequence_to_phoneme(sequence):
     return result.replace('}{', ' ')
 
 
+
+def text2phone(text):
+    '''
+    Convert graphemes to phonemes.
+    '''
+    try:
+        ph = epi.trans_list(text, normpunc=True)
+    except:
+        ph = None
+    return ph
+
+   
 def phoneme_to_sequence(text, cleaner_names):
     '''
     TODO: This ignores punctuations
diff --git a/utils/text/cmudict.py b/utils/text/cmudict.py
index 5fc3bcca..1202bf3d 100644
--- a/utils/text/cmudict.py
+++ b/utils/text/cmudict.py
@@ -1,8 +1,6 @@
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
 import re
-import epitran
-epi = epitran.Epitran('eng-Latn')
 
 # valid_symbols = [
 #     'AA', 'AA0', 'AA1', 'AA2', 'AE', 'AE0', 'AE1', 'AE2', 'AH', 'AH0', 'AH1',