Prevent Chrome from Translating a Page

By  on  

A while back I shared my favorite Google Chrome extension:  Google Art Project.  I've enjoyed seeing beautiful art when I open a new tab -- it's brought genuine happiness to my day, however small that happiness may be.  About a week ago, however, the art presented had a non-English name and so the Chrome "translate" bar dropped down every time I opened a new tab.  And since the artwork rotates daily, Chrome was super slow that day. It made me ask:  is there a way to prevent the translate bar from displaying? The answer is yes!

The answer comes in the form of a <meta> tag:

<meta name="google" value="notranslate">

I wish the Google Art Project developers would implement this tag so I could get a new tab opened without delay when the artwork has a non-English title.  It is also handy that developers can prevent the toolbar from displaying on their sites -- not that I can think of why.  Anyways, thought I'd share this with you.

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

  • By
    Conquering Impostor Syndrome

    Two years ago I documented my struggles with Imposter Syndrome and the response was immense.  I received messages of support and commiseration from new web developers, veteran engineers, and even persons of all experience levels in other professions.  I've even caught myself reading the post...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

  1. I also wish the Google Art Project Developers would implement this in their Google chrome to speed up things. Thanks for sharing.

  2. One of the things I nag browser makers on is documentation. I was curious to see if this was officially documented and it looks like it is:

    https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en

    There were some other interesting notes on that page too.

  3. Oumar FALL

    I whish this snippet be in HTML5 Boilerplate :)

  4. You can use a userscript that adds this meta.

  5. Google Chrome will also translate iframes on a page that contains content not in the browser default language.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!