diff --git a/normalizer/normalizer-repo-tags/calculate_repo_tags.py b/normalizer/normalizer-repo-tags/calculate_repo_tags.py
index ccc8fa3e7934e3f895a8d4b11bf6484aa8e71128..5f501667fbdff0d4f2d160b0b2a8bfea27b60f00 100644
--- a/normalizer/normalizer-repo-tags/calculate_repo_tags.py
+++ b/normalizer/normalizer-repo-tags/calculate_repo_tags.py
@@ -16,8 +16,9 @@ def calculateTags(inputDict, backend, calcUri):
         backend.openContext(calcUri)
         repoSect = backend.openSection("section_repository_info")
     repo_dic_sub = subprocess.Popen(['/u/jungho/myscratch/NomadRepositoryParser/bin/python', 'extract_from_repo.py'], stdin = subprocess.PIPE, stdout = subprocess.PIPE)
-    repo_dic_sub_out = repo_dic_sub.communicate(json.dumps(inputDict)+'\n')[0]
-    repo_dic = json.loads(repo_dic_sub_out)
+    inputDict_str = json.dumps(inputDict)+'\n' 
+    repo_dic_sub_out = repo_dic_sub.communicate(inputDict_str.encode('utf-8'))[0]
+    repo_dic = json.loads(repo_dic_sub_out.decode("utf-8"))
 
     #backend.addValue("repository_checksum", repo_dic['checksum'])
     backend.addValue("repository_chemical_formula", repo_dic['formula'])
@@ -54,8 +55,8 @@ def main():
         calcUri,
         parserInfo = {'name':'RepoTagsNormalizer', 'version': '1.0'})
 
-    dictReader=ParseStreamedDicts(sys.stdin)
-    #dictReader=ParseStreamedDicts(open("/u/jungho/myscratch/nomad-lab-base/normalizers/repo-tags/test/examples/scalaOut2.txt", 'r'))
+    #dictReader=ParseStreamedDicts(sys.stdin)
+    dictReader=ParseStreamedDicts(open("/u/jungho/myscratch/nomad-lab-base/normalizers/repo-tags/test/examples/scalaOut2.txt", 'r'))
 
     while True:
         inputDict=dictReader.readNextDict()