Fast Translate
Changing the WordPress site language to any other than English slows down page generation times. A lot. This is caused by the slow and inefficient way of text domain loading. PO and MO files are designed to be used with…
Consider an alternative
Fast Translate shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 7 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (10+ active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
- No update in 6 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 5.3 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Fast Translate stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| l10n | #54 |
| localization | >100 |
| performance | >100 |
| speed | >100 |
| translation | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
About Fast Translate
From the official readme · v1.4Description
Changing the WordPress site language to any other than English slows down page generation times. A lot. This is caused by the slow and inefficient way of text domain loading. PO and MO files are designed to be used with PHP Gettext-extension. But since it’s an extension, it’s not installed by defalt on very hosting platform. To overcome this barrier, WordPress has re-implemented the whole MO file parsing in PHP, but WordPress’ implementation is quite slow and memory intense.
This plugin replaces the default MO-Reader with another implementation of MO parsing, which is faster than the default one. Only used text domains are loaded (since version 4.6 this is also WordPress’ default behaviour) and from these only used translations are loaded. It also makes use of hash tables included in mo files, which are ignored completely by WordPress’ default implementation. To boost the performance even more, the plugin also caches translations to the object cache, if one is installed. For optimal performance you need a fast object cache backend like Redis, Memcached or APC(u).
Fast Translate is a minimalistic fork of WP Performance Packs localization improvements. WP Performance Pack offers additional control and more optimizations for WordPress performance, e.g. use of PHPs native gettext extension, improved image handling and CDN support.
Installation
Requires PHP >= 5.3 and WordPress >= 4.0
- Download, install and activate. That’s it. No settings required.
Changelog
1.4
- PHP <= 7.0 compatibility fix (thanks @no3x)
1.3
- Fixed plurals translation (thanks @wordpressserg)
- Some minor tweaks and fixes for PHP >= 7.2
1.2.1
- Futher performance improvements
- Added improvements by @mte90
1.2.0
First realease on wp.org
Screenshots
For developers
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FAQ
Fast Translate: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Oct 13, 2026
Is Fast Translate free?
Yes. Fast Translate is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Fast Translate safe to use in 2026?
Fast Translate shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 7 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Fast Translate?
Fast Translate is active on 10+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 4,334 times since it launched in June 2017. It was downloaded 68 times in the last 30 days.
Does Fast Translate work with WordPress 7.1?
Fast Translate is officially tested up to WordPress 5.3.26, while the latest release is 7.1.3. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Fast Translate last updated?
The latest version, 1.4, was released on December 12, 2019 (7 years ago).
Who makes Fast Translate?
Fast Translate is developed and maintained by Bjoern.
What are the best alternatives to Fast Translate?
The most popular alternatives to Fast Translate are Loco Translate (1M+ installs), WPBakery Visual Composer &… (7K+ installs) and ACF: Rus-To-Lat (2K+ installs).
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