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Problem:
You are using WPML with WooCommerce and other plugins, managing a multilingual site with German as the default language and English and Spanish as secondary languages. You have 22,000 products, each with 5 images across 3 languages, resulting in 330,000 images. This large number of duplicated images for each language is consuming 90% of your disk storage.
Solution:
1. To prevent duplicating product images for translations, ensure the 'Automatically detect best options for translating image texts' option is enabled in WPML. This setting allows WPML to decide how to handle image metadata based on the image's usage context:
- If the image text is stored within the content (e.g., Gutenberg blocks or WooCommerce product images), WPML translates it directly without duplication.
- If the image text is sourced from the Media Library (e.g., Elementor or Divi Gallery), WPML duplicates the media text only when necessary.
This approach ensures translations are accurate without creating unnecessary database entries.
2. With this option enabled, images are not duplicated in the database; translated products will display the correct images using the same file across all languages, with only the metadata (alt text, title, etc.) being translated.

If this solution does not apply to your case, or if it seems outdated, we recommend opening a new support ticket. We also 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. For further assistance, please visit our support forum at WPML Support Forum.