How can I remove the Translation entries in apt?

To disable downloading translations, create a file named /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99translations & put the following in it:

Acquire::Languages "none";

You may also need to remove existing translation files in /var/lib/apt/lists/

For more information see the man page to apt.conf (5).

Just for the record (since some will trip on this ..) the 99Translations file above will cause apt to barf - remove the "Packages: *" line - just the one line is enough:

Acquire::Languages "none";

Also, apt will still retrieve the files for your locale/language.

Enable pipelining to batch these requests, which is much faster:

Acquire::http { Pipeline-Depth "200"; }

But in my experience it can result in broken downloads; http error codes seem to cascade or something. It should be safe enough if you are talking to apt-cacher-ng (either mirror mode or proxy mode). Otherwise, be prepared to disable it if your mirror breaks.

I would advise against setting languages to none, because it breaks apt-cache search (none means none, when useful searches would need descriptions in at least one language). The locale-based default includes unnecessary regional variants, but something like this:

Acquire::Languages { "fr"; "en"; };

is reasonable.