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
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns= "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="google" content="notranslate">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en">
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:
-
W3C recommendation: Use the
lang
and/orxml:lang
attributes in the html tag:<html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns= "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
-
UPDATE: previously a Google recommendation now deprecated spec although it may still help with Chrome. :
meta http-equiv
(as described above):<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en">
-
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.