I kind of like the not so official solution by @distantnative. The only thing is that it does not look like a native config.
Maybe somthing like this could make it more standard?
c::set('ascii', array(
'/Ä/' => 'A',
'/æ|ǽ|ä/' => 'a',
'/œ|ö/' => 'o',
'/Ö/' => 'O',
'/ö/' => 'o',
));
And it will only change matched characters. The rest could still use the core character translation.
Maybe change ascii
to something more telling.