Over the past couple of years, we’ve been translating a steady stream of resumes for American expats moving to Israel. Most of them have experience in both countries and the original English resumes denote the location of Israeli institutions with city and country names (for example: Jerusalem, Israel). This makes perfect sense if you don’t want a potential US employer to wonder if the applicant spent a year, say, in Jerusalem, Ohio or Jerusalem, New Zealand. On the other hand, American cities are never qualified with a country name (they’ve heard of Philadelphia back home).
My pet peeve is to receive a translation in which everything is left just as it was in the original. The translator duly notes where Jerusalem (and other Israeli cities) is located, as if an Israeli employer might have a shred of a doubt exactly which Jerusalem is being discussed. At the same time, the location of places such as Baltimore, Cleveland, or New Brunswick is not identified, although few Israelis have heard of these places.
During last week’s annual conference of the Israel Translators Association , 