diff --git a/traydict/unicodereplace.pl b/traydict/unicodereplace.pl
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..12dd34190
--- /dev/null
+++ b/traydict/unicodereplace.pl
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+#!/usr/bin/perl
+
+#############################
+# unicodereplace.pl - replaces high codepoints in infile with \uHEX escapes
+####
+# Usage: unicodereplace.pl infile outfile
+#############################
+
+use warnings;
+use strict;
+use utf8;
+
+my ($infile, $outfile) = @ARGV; # get arguments
+
+open(INFILE, "<:utf8", $infile) or die("Can't open $infile: $!");
+open(OUTFILE, ">:utf8", $outfile) or die("Can't open $outfile: $!");
+
+# loop over lines in the infile
+while (<INFILE>) {
+	for (split('', $_)) { 									# loop over characters in the line
+		my $cp = ord;
+		if ($cp < 127 or $cp == 0xFFFE or $cp == 0xFEFF) {  # is it a normal ASCII codepoint or a BOM?
+			print OUTFILE $_;								# then pass through unchanged
+		} 
+		else {
+			print OUTFILE "\\u", sprintf("%04x", $cp);  	# otherwise print as \uHEX
+		}
+	}
+}