That is expected. WPML creates different posts for each translations you create, and they're saved in the table wp_posts as regular posts. Therefore, if you disable WPML you'll all your translations, just not split by language of course.
Oh wow.. it's really disappointing that it's the expected behavior. I understand the technical reason behind it but I think that some basic tricks could avoid the undesired situation. For example by hiding the posts that WPML created.
WPML is already a quite intrusive plugin and it's causing around 20% of performance overhead (also expected it seems) and not being to disable it seamlessly is another drawback.
Would you mind please consult with the team if there's a practical solution that does not imply deleting or moving to draft hundreds of products while I do my tests? In the end I need to re-activate the plugins and therefore I can't even think of doing the work twice.
Thank you for contacting us. I am happy to help you.
As my colleague said, this is the normal behavior of WPML.
WPML is creating normal posts for each language following WordPress behavior. In the end, there is a correlation in some tables of WPML that pointing which post is created in the default language and which posts are created as translations.
So there is no default way to, automatically disable translated content and not show in your website if you disable WPML.
But you can create something custom to disable all the translations if you disable WPML .
I can give you an idea of a similar implementation to sync post status between languages : hidden link
