title: Change Google Translate dropdown programmatically
body: <p>On a site I tried adding the Google Translate dropdown using the following code: </p>
  
  <pre><code>function googleTranslateElementInit() {
    new google.translate.TranslateElement({
      pageLanguage: 'en'
    }, 'google_translate_element');
  }
  
  &lt;script src="http://translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When you select from the dropdown that the google script inserts, a Google Translate bar appears at the top of the page, and all text is translated in to the selected language.</p>
  
  <p>However if I try and trigger the dropdown change using JavaScript, it doesn't work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$('.goog-te-combo').val('fr')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>'French' is selected from the dropdown, however Google Translate is not triggered.</p>
  
  <p>Why o why does it not work? I've also tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$('.goog-te-combo').trigger('click')
  $('.goog-te-combo').change()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>UPDATE: FYI this is not my site. I was using the Chrome console to load jQuery and execute the jQuery methods. </p>