How to set the tabs on node pages to always display in the site's default language? I don't want $tabs to be translated. How can I set the tabs on node pages to always display in default site language?

I've tried admin language module however the setting that works in that prevents menu items from been translated. 

Is there a way to manually set the rendered language in the tpl?
You can use this function (inspired from this solution wich was for Drupal 6)

/**
 * Reverse translation: find source string for a given translated string.
 */
function rt($string) {
  global $language;
  $langcode = $language-&gt;language;
  $query = db_select('locales_source', 'ls');
  $query-&gt;leftJoin('locales_target', 'lt', 'ls.lid = lt.lid');
  $query-&gt;fields('ls', array('source'));
  $query-&gt;condition('lt.language', $langcode);
  $query-&gt;condition('lt.translation', $string);
  $result = $query-&gt;execute();
  $records = $result-&gt;fetchAssoc();

  return $records ? $records['source'] : $string;
}


Then via hook_menu_local_tasks_alter

/**
 * Implements hook_menu_local_tasks_alter().
 */
function mymodule_menu_local_tasks_alter(&amp;$data, $router_item, $root_path) {
  foreach ($router_item['page_arguments'] as $key =&gt; $argument) {
    if (is_object($argument) &amp;&amp; isset($argument-&gt;type)) {
      foreach ($data['tabs'][0]['output'] as $key =&gt; $value) {
        $data['tabs'][0]['output'][$key]['#link']['title'] = rt($value['#link']['title']);
      }
    }
  }
}