mikhaelA

Problem:
If you're experiencing slow site performance when the Advanced Custom Fields Multilingual plugin is activated, it might be due to the high number of ACF field calls. In a case we investigated, activating WPML increased the load time significantly because it hooked into each ACF field call for translation, executing over 8000 times.
Solution:
To address this, we recommend two strategies:
1. Reduce the number of ACF field calls by modifying the theme to minimize usage of

acf_get_field

, especially for fields that don't require translation. Replace these with direct

get_post_meta

calls to bypass both WPML and ACF retrieval logic.
2. Use a filter introduced in ACFML 2.1.4 to bypass translation logic. Add the following code to your theme's

functions.php

or as a drop-in plugin:

add_filter( 'acfml_should_translate_acf_entity', function( $should, $field, $context ) {<br />    $should = false;<br />    static $customfield_settings;<br />    if ( ! is_array( $customfield_settings ) ) {<br />        $icl_sitepress_settings = get_option( 'icl_sitepress_settings' );<br />        $customfield_settings = $icl_sitepress_settings['translation-management']['custom_fields_translation'];<br />    }<br />    if ( $context === 'field' ) {<br />        $field_name = $field['name'];<br />        if ( isset( $customfield_settings[$field_name] ) && $customfield_settings[$field_name] === WPML_TRANSLATE_CUSTOM_FIELD ) {<br />            $should = true;<br />        }<br />    }<br />    return $should;<br />}, 10, 3 );

This code ensures that only fields marked for translation are processed, significantly improving performance.

If these solutions do not resolve your issue or seem outdated, we highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. If the problem persists, please open a new support ticket.