Chaning locale sorting order for statements

Hello,
is it possible to change the locale sorting order in statements ? 
I need this for a multilingual web application, where I'm not
able to set the locale in the session or elsewhere.

In Oracle I would use something like that :
SELECT * FROM table1
ORDER BY NLSSORT(column1, 'NLS_SORT=FRENCH');

Does postgres has something similar ?

Thx
berger