Making internationalization/localization in WordPress faster than ever before.
This project uses a new approach to handle translation files in WordPress, making localization blazing fast.
An in-depth i18n performance analysis showed that localized WordPress sites load significantly slower than a site without translations.
With this plugin's new approach to localization, this overhead is massively reduced, making your site fast again.
If your site is using a language other than English (US), you should see immediate speed improvements simply by activating this plugin.
The primary purpose of this plugin is to allow broader testing of these enhancements, for which the goal is to eventually land in WordPress core.
Performant Translations supports multiple file formats (.mo and .php), as well as multiple text domains and locales loaded at the same time.
By default, it converts existing .mo files to .php and afterwards only loads the translations from the .php file.
By converting .mo files to .php files, the translations can be parsed much faster.
Plus, .php files can be stored in the so-called OPcache, which provides an additional speed boost.
While the plugin is mostly considered to be a beta testing plugin, it has been tested and established to a degree where it should be okay to use in production. Still, as with every plugin, you are doing so at your own risk.
Yes. This plugin has been tested with common multilingual plugins, such as WPML, Weglot, TranslatePress, MultilingualPress, and Polylang. If you still encounter issues, please let us know.
No. Once the plugin is activated, it just works, and you should see speed improvements right away. If you run into issues, please open a new support topic.
Yes. Once you deactivate and uninstall the plugin, all .php files generated by it will be removed from the server.
Contributions are always welcome! Learn more about how to get involved in the Core Performance Team Handbook.
If you have suggestions or requests for new features, you can submit them as an issue on the GitHub repository.
If you need help with troubleshooting or have a question about the plugin, please create a new topic on our support forum.
The following numbers are for a site running WordPress trunk (6.4 alpha) with multiple active plugins.
Twenty Twenty-Three
| Locale | Scenario | Memory Usage | Load Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| en_US | Default | 14.86 MB | 141.15 ms |
| de_DE | Default | 28.29 MB | 191.22 ms |
| de_DE | Performant Translations | 16.02 MB | 148.35 ms |
Twenty Twenty-One
| Locale | Scenario | Memory Usage | Load Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| en_US | Default | 14.46 MB | 124.66 ms |
| de_DE | Default | 27.96 MB | 173.44 ms |
| de_DE | Performant Translations | 15.62 MB | 132.60 ms |
WordPress Admin
| Locale | Scenario | Memory Usage | Load Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| en_US | Default | 15.74 MB | 171.44 ms |
| de_DE | Default | 32.35 MB | 220.61 ms |
| de_DE | Performant Translations | 17.36 MB | 172.41 ms |
Ginger MO was originally developed by Dion Hulse.