Performant Translations Plugin Now Available on WordPress.org – WP Tavern
After an in-depth efficiency evaluation earlier this 12 months revealed that translations can impact server response times, WordPress contributors proposed half a dozen technical options for consideration to enhance efficiency for the ~56% of web sites that use translations.
Performant Translations, a function undertaking by the core Efficiency Staff, is now accessible as a plugin on WordPress.org. It incorporates a few of the proposed options and quickens translations by changing .mo
recordsdata to .php
recordsdata, permitting them to be parsed quicker and saved in OPcache.
It helps a number of file codecs (.mo
, .php
, and .json
) and a number of textual content domains and locales loaded on the similar time. Current .mo
recordsdata get transformed to .php
recordsdata that are then loaded by WordPress.
A chart included on the plugin’s particulars web page exhibits a major web page load time discount when utilizing the plugin, as in comparison with websites with translations that don’t use the plugin. The plugin brings translations very near the identical web page load instances as English (non-translated) websites.

“With sufficient testing and suggestions, we hope to ultimately merge this plugin into WordPress core,” Efficiency Staff contributor Pascal Birchler stated when asserting the plugin on X.
“Within the coming weeks and months we are going to share extra testing directions and proceed to enhance the plugin. This shall be made accessible by way of Efficiency Lab, too.”
Customers who’re testing the plugin can report issues on the support forum or create a difficulty on the GitHub repository.
Performant Translations is taken into account to be a beta testing plugin however could be examined and utilized in manufacturing at your personal danger. It doesn’t require any modifications to settings or configuration after set up. The plugin could be safely eliminated after testing, as a result of it basically cleans up after itself. All .php
recordsdata it generates shall be eliminated by the server as soon as the plugin is deactivated and uninstalled.