Efficiently replace all accented characters in a string?

str.translate()

// s would be a rather short string (something like
// 200 characters at max, most of the time much less)
function makeSortString(s) {
  var translate = {
    "ä": "a", "ö": "o", "ü": "u",
    "Ä": "A", "Ö": "O", "Ü": "U"   // probably more to come
  };
  var translate_re = /[öäüÖÄÜ]/g;
  return ( s.replace(translate_re, function(match) {
    return translate[match];
  }) );
}

function makeSortString(s) {
  if(!makeSortString.translate_re) makeSortString.translate_re = /[öäüÖÄÜ]/g;
  var translate = {
    "ä": "a", "ö": "o", "ü": "u",
    "Ä": "A", "Ö": "O", "Ü": "U"   // probably more to come
  };
  return ( s.replace(makeSortString.translate_re, function(match) {
    return translate[match];
  }) );
}

makeSortString.translate_re = /[a-z]/g;

var makeSortString = (function() {
  var translate_re = /[öäüÖÄÜ]/g;
  return function(s) {
    var translate = {
      "ä": "a", "ö": "o", "ü": "u",
      "Ä": "A", "Ö": "O", "Ü": "U"   // probably more to come
    };
    return ( s.replace(translate_re, function(match) {
      return translate[match];
    }) );
  }
})();

var makeSortString = (function() {
  var translate_re = /[öäüÖÄÜ]/g;
  var translate = {
    "ä": "a", "ö": "o", "ü": "u",
    "Ä": "A", "Ö": "O", "Ü": "U"   // probably more to come
  };
  return function(s) {
    return ( s.replace(translate_re, function(match) {
      return translate[match];
    }) );
  }
})();

// file encoding must be UTF-8!
function getTextExtractor()
{
  return (function() {
    var patternLetters = /[öäüÖÄÜáàâéèêúùûóòôÁÀÂÉÈÊÚÙÛÓÒÔß]/g;
    var patternDateDmy = /^(?:D+)?(d{1,2}).(d{1,2}).(d{2,4})$/;
    var lookupLetters = {
      "ä": "a", "ö": "o", "ü": "u",
      "Ä": "A", "Ö": "O", "Ü": "U",
      "á": "a", "à": "a", "â": "a",
      "é": "e", "è": "e", "ê": "e",
      "ú": "u", "ù": "u", "û": "u",
      "ó": "o", "ò": "o", "ô": "o",
      "Á": "A", "À": "A", "Â": "A",
      "É": "E", "È": "E", "Ê": "E",
      "Ú": "U", "Ù": "U", "Û": "U",
      "Ó": "O", "Ò": "O", "Ô": "O",
      "ß": "s"
    };
    var letterTranslator = function(match) {
      return lookupLetters[match] || match;
    }

    return function(node) {
      var text = $.trim($(node).text());
      var date = text.match(patternDateDmy);
      if (date)
        return [date[3], date[2], date[1]].join("-");
      else
        return text.replace(patternLetters, letterTranslator);
    }
  })();
}

$("table.sortable").tablesorter({
  textExtraction: getTextExtractor()
});

String.prototype.strip = function() {
  var translate_re = /[öäüÖÄÜß ]/g;
  var translate = {
    "ä":"a", "ö":"o", "ü":"u",
    "Ä":"A", "Ö":"O", "Ü":"U",
    " ":"_", "ß":"ss"   // probably more to come
  };
    return (this.replace(translate_re, function(match){
        return translate[match];})
    );
};

var teststring = 'ä ö ü Ä Ö Ü ß';
teststring.strip();