HI there, you are correct - a LocalizationTable stores the translations for your in-experience strings.
You are also right in saying that the translation is not a real-time process, and it could take up to a couple of hours for automatic translations to be generated (if it is enabled in the first place). However, we are looking at enabling a real time translation API in the near future.
When a player encounters an in-experience strings, we look up the the source in your localization table and try to find a match. If a match is found, the translation is rendered, or else we will just show the source string.
I hope this clears up some of your confusion around our translation systems!