New php-gettext, speed up WordPress l10n describes two quite simple measures to give WordPress a bit of a boost. Specifically, the gettext support is suboptimal - which affects every user of a non-English WordPress installation. Gettext is used to load the translations. With the mentioned patches, these areas are significantly accelerated, especially noticeable on individual pages (where the number of database accesses is smaller), but also, for example, on my homepage, this has resulted in a measurable acceleration.