1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: in response to a search query having a search term having a plurality of characters received from a client, determining a current language locale; building a data structure having a plurality of nodes to represent variance of the search term having identical meaning of the search term based on the current language locale, each of the nodes representing one of the characters in the search term, wherein the data structure includes at least two nodes corresponding to different characters that have an identical meaning under the current language locale; traversing each node of the data structure to identify one or more postings lists of an index corresponding to the plurality nodes of the data structure, wherein each node of the data structure is associated with a key presenting a collation of variance of different characters having an identical meaning in different language locales, wherein traversing the data structure comprises: matching a first key of each node of the data structure against a second key of a corresponding character of the search term, removing from the data structure a character candidate having a key that does not match the second key, and returning to the client one or more item identifiers obtained from the one or more postings list, the one or more item identifiers identifying one or more files that contain the variance of the search term represented by the data structure.