diff --git a/src-ui/src/app/data/ocr-template.ts b/src-ui/src/app/data/ocr-template.ts
index 453dd262d..1766c27f2 100644
--- a/src-ui/src/app/data/ocr-template.ts
+++ b/src-ui/src/app/data/ocr-template.ts
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ export enum OcrZoneTransform {
   QrCode = 'qr_code',
 }
 
-export const DEFAULT_OCR_ZONE_LANGUAGE = 'deu+eng'
+export const DEFAULT_OCR_ZONE_LANGUAGE = 'eng'
 
 /** The field a zone writes to, keyed by OcrTemplate.combine_formats. */
 export function getZoneFieldKey(zone: OcrTemplateZone): string | null {
diff --git a/src/documents/migrations/0028_ocrtemplate_ocrtemplatezone.py b/src/documents/migrations/0028_ocrtemplate_ocrtemplatezone.py
index 7a937742f..d93ddecf6 100644
--- a/src/documents/migrations/0028_ocrtemplate_ocrtemplatezone.py
+++ b/src/documents/migrations/0028_ocrtemplate_ocrtemplatezone.py
@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ class Migration(migrations.Migration):
                 (
                     "ocr_language",
                     models.CharField(
-                        default="deu+eng",
+                        default="eng",
                         help_text="Tesseract language code(s), e.g. 'deu+eng'",
                         max_length=20,
                         verbose_name="OCR language",
diff --git a/src/documents/models.py b/src/documents/models.py
index 6ec45c927..39070cd7f 100644
--- a/src/documents/models.py
+++ b/src/documents/models.py
@@ -2323,7 +2323,7 @@ class OcrTemplateZone(models.Model):
     ocr_language = models.CharField(
         _("OCR language"),
         max_length=20,
-        default="deu+eng",
+        default="eng",
         help_text=_("Tesseract language code(s), e.g. 'deu+eng'"),
     )