str.translate()

str.translate(table)

Return a copy of the string in which each character has been mapped through the given translation table. The table must be an object that implements indexing via __getitem__(), typically a mapping or sequence. When indexed by a Unicode ordinal (an integer), the table object can do any of the following: return a Unicode ordinal or a string, to map the character to one or more other characters; return None, to delete the character from the return string; or raise a LookupError exception, to map the character to itself.

You can use str.maketrans() to create a translation map from character-to-character mappings in different formats.

See also the codecs module for a more flexible approach to custom character mappings.