diff --git a/app.js b/app.js
index 8f9300f24..e42e2d975 100644
--- a/app.js
+++ b/app.js
@@ -131,7 +131,8 @@ if (config.csp.enable) {
 i18n.configure({
   locales: ['en', 'zh', 'zh-CN', 'zh-TW', 'fr', 'de', 'ja', 'es', 'ca', 'el', 'pt', 'it', 'tr', 'ru', 'nl', 'hr', 'pl', 'uk', 'hi', 'sv', 'eo', 'da'],
   cookie: 'locale',
-  directory: path.join(__dirname, '/locales')
+  directory: path.join(__dirname, '/locales'),
+  updateFiles: config.updateI18nFiles
 })
 
 app.use(cookieParser())
diff --git a/lib/config/index.js b/lib/config/index.js
index 484301c41..7853dbad9 100644
--- a/lib/config/index.js
+++ b/lib/config/index.js
@@ -102,6 +102,9 @@ config.isSAMLEnable = config.saml.idpSsoUrl
 config.isOAuth2Enable = config.oauth2.clientID && config.oauth2.clientSecret
 config.isPDFExportEnable = config.allowPDFExport
 
+// Only update i18n files in development setups
+config.updateI18nFiles = (env === Environment.development)
+
 // merge legacy values
 let keys = Object.keys(config)
 const uppercase = /[A-Z]/