Why does Chrome incorrectly determine page is in a different language and offer to translate?

Question

The new Google Chrome auto-translation feature is tripping up on one page within one of our applications. Whenever we navigate to this particular page, Chrome tells us the

Answer 1

Update: according to Google

We don’t use any code-level language information such as lang attributes.

They recommend you make it obvious what your site's language is. Use the following which seems to help although Content-Language is deprecated and Google says they ignore lang

If that doesn't work, you can always place a bunch of text (your "About" page for instance) in a hidden div. That might help with SEO as well.

EDIT (and more info)

The OP is asking about Chrome, so Google's recommendation is posted above. There are generally three ways to accomplish this for other browsers:

1. W3C recommendation: Use the lang and/or xml:lang attributes in the html tag:

2. UPDATE: previously a Google recommendation now deprecated spec although it may still help with Chrome. : meta http-equiv (as described above):

3. Use HTTP headers (not recommended based on cross-browser recognition tests):

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:46:04 GMT
   Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
   Content-Language: en
   

Exit Chrome completely and restart it to ensure the change is detected. Chrome doesn't always pick up the new meta tag on tab refresh.