Latency Optimization - Tips for Optimal Performance

Delivering fast, seamless localization is crucial for a great user experience. Latency — the delay between a user's request and the server's response — can impact how quickly translations load in your app. Here’s how to minimize latency and keep your users happy.

What is Latency?

Latency is the time it takes for a request to travel from the sender (your app or user) to the receiver (the server), and for the server to process and respond. Factors affecting latency include:

Physical distance between user and server
Network quality and congestion
Server processing time

High latency can cause slow translation loading, especially for users far from your server or on slow networks.

How to Optimize Latency

While you can’t eliminate latency entirely, you can apply these best practices to reduce its impact:

1. Create a Dedicated Production Version

Set up a dedicated version of your translations for production use. This ensures stability and prevents accidental changes from affecting live users.

2. Disable Auto Publish for Production

Do not enable auto publish for your production version. Instead, publish updates manually, via the API, or using the CLI. This gives you control over when changes go live and allows for proper testing.

3. Enable Cache-Control (max-age)

Leverage HTTP caching by enabling Cache-Control max-age. This allows browsers and CDNs to cache translations, reducing the number of requests to the server and speeding up load times for end users.

Note: Configuring max-age is only possible with the Pro CDN. If you are using the standard CDN, this option is not available. See the caching documentation for details.

Additional Tips

Minimize the number of requests by bundling translations where possible.
Monitor latency and cache hit rates to identify bottlenecks.

Quick Checklist

Dedicated production version created
Auto publish disabled for production
Manual/API/CLI publishing workflow in place
Cache-Control max-age enabled

By following these tips, you’ll ensure your localized content loads quickly and reliably for users around the world.