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First off, this is probably a duplicate of:

How can I prevent Google mistakenly offering to translate a page?

But the question above was posted back in 2010, things might be different in 2016.


Google shows Translate this page / Traduire cette page next to the website homepage URL (see screenshot) in SERP:

enter image description here

If I hover the translate this page link that displays in the SERP, I get this link:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=en&u=http://www.sintelleparapharmacie.com/&prev=search

The sl = en bit most probably means that the source language is English. However, it clearly isn't.

All the other indexed pages of the website do NOT show the Translate this page / Traduire cette page suggestion, which is expected behaviour. Only the homepage has the issue.


I wrote <HTML lang='fr'> in the HTML source, and targeted the users in Google Webmaster Tools as living in France. No joy.

I used the send feedback link at the bottom of the SERP, to try and report the issue to Google. No answer received.


How can I either:

  • programmatically tell Google not to suggest to translate French into French in SERP, or:

  • report this issue to Google?


EDIT below: screenshot obtained after clicking the "traduire cette page" link (see comments after GDav's post)

Google translates French into French

As you can see, "rides marquées", which is French for "deep wrinkles", is seen as English. Google translate "rides" as "manèges" (like at the fun fair); it sees the French adjective "marquées" as the English noun "marquees", and translates it as "chapiteaux" (large tents)

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  • There is no good reason that Google should think that page is in English. There are plenty of French words on it. There is no English other than "blog" and "contact" which are probably the same between the two languages. It uses Content-Language: fr header and <html lang="fr-FR"> markup. The ONLY English I see are some comments in the page source JavaScript like: "script is loaded, you can now do things with jQuery". Removing those comments is the only thing I can think of that might help. May 5, 2016 at 16:31
  • Your other pages use <html lang="fr"> which is more correct. fr-FR is a locale specifier, not just a language specifier. May 5, 2016 at 16:36
  • ok, thanks, I will replace "fr-FR" by "fr", remove the comments, and keep you posted...
    – Manube
    May 5, 2016 at 16:41
  • Google gets rather stupid sometimes. Sorry Google! I have seen this when navigational or other significant HTML DOM elements appear to be in English (or another language). Sometimes, it does not take much. Also, sometimes Google will only do this for a period and will (somehow) recognize it's mistake and correct the problem later. Google is a machine that requires a lot of information to fully understand things. Sometimes it can take a while for all of the information that Google needs to be collected. In the meantime, funny things can happen from time to time for a short period. Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    May 8, 2016 at 14:15

1 Answer 1

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+100

Interestingly, while I get the same "Traduire cette page" link from google.fr, on visiting the page (my browser is set to British English) Chrome tells me the page is in French and offers to translate it.

The browser function allows you to report errors.

enter image description here

I can't be sure that errors reported here will affect search results, but it's certainly worth a try:

https://translate.google.com/translate_error?client=cr&action=langidc&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sintelleparapharmacie.com%2F%23lierac&sl=fr&hl=en&key=AIzaSyBOti4mM-6x9WDnZIjIeyEU21OpBXqWBgw

For anyone else with the same problem, it looks quite easy to submit reports without triggering the browser message, too. Format seems to be: https://translate.google.com/translate_error?client=cr&action=langidc&u=[INSERT ENCODED URL HERE]&sl=[DETECTED LANGUAGE CODE]&hl=[REPORT LANGUAGE CODE]

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  • my browser is also in British English, and set never to translate pages in English or French. However, Google sees the "sintelleparapharmacie" homepage as an English page, and offers to translate it into French. If I click the "traduire cette page" link, it does attempt a translation: the resulting page is close to the original, but with a few oddities: I will provide a screenshot...
    – Manube
    May 9, 2016 at 16:48
  • I used the "translate_error" link you provided to (hopefully) report to Google; I had to tweak it to "sl=en" and "hl=fr", but being able to actually do something actually cheered me up a bit. I would upvote your answer if I could (not enough rep). I will probably accept your answer, as you did provide a way to report the issue to Google. Thank you!
    – Manube
    May 9, 2016 at 17:25

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