Sorting list of Chinese strings

Question

I have a list of Chinese strings; for example, like this:

list1 = StringPartition[Import["http://text-share.com/view/c652fa55", "Data"][[-1]], 4]

Now I want to sort it according to Chinese alphabetical order.

There are two equivalent ways, but they differ in efficiency.

The faster way is

AlphabeticSort[new, Entity["Language", "ChineseMandarin"]]; // AbsoluteTiming
(*{0.00261, Null}*)

a much slower way is

SortBy[new, Transliterate]; // AbsoluteTiming
(*{0.465786, Null}*)

However, what if my data is like this:

list2 = Transpose[{list1, Range @ Length @ list1}];

I want to sort this list by the Chinese strings in it. SortBy[list2, Transliterate @ #[[1]] &] is definitely slow. AlphabeticOrder is also slow:

Sort[list2, 
   AlphabeticOrder[#1[[1]], #2[[1]], 
     Entity["Language", "ChineseMandarin"]]>=0 &]; // AbsoluteTiming
(*{0.512303, Null}*)

Is it possible to use AlphabeticSort to sort an arbitrary list to get maximum efficiency?

Answer 1

Spelunking the code of AlphabeticSort[] reveals its mechanism: it generates an index list (similar to Ordering[]) that is then used to sort the original list of strings. Extracting the relevant internal code for constructing this index list, we have:

list1 = StringPartition[Import["http://text-share.com/view/c652fa55", "Data"][[-1]], 4];
list2 = Transpose[{list1, Range @ Length @ list1}];

lang = "ChineseMandarin";
args = Prepend[System`AlphabeticOrderDump`convertOptionsToStringSortArguments[
               "Language" -> lang, "MainHeader" -> AlphabeticSort], 
               System`AlphabeticOrderDump`getCollatorID[lang]];
idx = System`AlphabeticOrderDump`callStringsOrderingFunction[{list2[[All, 1]],
                                                              Sequence @@ args}];
list2[[idx]]