Latency issue

Hi,

TranslatePress is designed to have minimal impact on performance, especially in the default language, which is served without translation processing. In fact, for the default language, TranslatePress doesn’t load any translation strings—so under normal circumstances, it should behave exactly as it would without the plugin.

Here’s some more technical insight into how TranslatePress operates, especially when dealing with performance concerns like the one you described:

• Full Page Processing: TranslatePress reads the entire HTML of the page as a string and converts it into a large object representing the page’s structure. This object needs to remain in memory while translations are applied. So, if your page has a large amount of HTML or dynamic content, this can increase memory usage and slow down rendering—especially on uncached first loads.
• Use a Caching Plugin
  We strongly recommend using a caching plugin, which ensures that TranslatePress doesn’t reprocess pages on every load. When pages are cached, the translation logic is bypassed, significantly improving performance.
• Automatic Translation Overhead
  On the first load of an untranslated page, automatic translation will delay rendering, as the server waits to fetch and store translations before displaying the content. This happens only once per page/language/visitor, or if you later update that content.
• Dynamic JavaScript Translations
  TranslatePress includes a JavaScript listener that detects text changes on the frontend (like AJAX notices or dynamic elements) and triggers an AJAX request to fetch translations. While it’s lightweight and doesn’t use core WordPress AJAX, it can lead to performance issues under heavy traffic.
  –You can disable this under:
  TranslatePress > Settings > Advanced > Troubleshooting > Disable dynamic translation
• Automatic Translation Memory
  The memory used to store translations from services like Google Translate or DeepL can slightly increase load times. For testing, you can disable this feature under:
  Settings > Advanced > Miscellaneous > Disable automatic translation memory
• Optimize Database Tables
  TranslatePress stores translation strings in its own custom tables. Over time, these can accumulate unused or orphaned entries.
  –Go to:
  Settings > Advanced > Debug > Optimize TranslatePress database tables
  …to clean and optimize them.
• Disable Gettext Translation
  If you’ve translated many gettext strings (e.g., from themes/plugins), this can also contribute to delays.
  –Try disabling gettext string translation under:
  Settings > Advanced > Debug > Disable translation for gettext strings