I've been trying to troubleshoot what I can only assume is a bug somewhere.
I have my own translation files within the core which I use for things outside of any plugin/snippet etc. Mostly for content titles which are meant to be translated and so on depending on the context the user is surfing.
When I use the code to display the string in my template:
[[%others_sample? &topic=`others`]]
I clear the cache, then reload the page to preview. I see this padding at the top of the page. Further inspecting with firebug showed me that somehow, the contents of my <head> tag in the HTML get sent bellow the <body> tag. Causing this extra space.
If I reload a second time (now that the page is in cache) then it works correctly.
But everytime the cache is clear, on the first load, it appears wrong again.
If I remove the lexicon tag, then all works perfectly.
This seems to be some kind of issue with the lexicon tag but I have not been able to figure it out yet.
To further test if there was anything else affecting this, I tried an empty HTML file with just the lexicon tag on it and exactly the same thing happened. There was nothing else in the html file other than the lexicon tag.