I chose Bolivia because I know next to nothing about it and it seemed neutral; I should have used a notional country, like the Republic of United Swiss Emirates.

You've never had to do that before? Maybe I run into it a lot due to the nature of the conferences I attend. I know just enough of the language for functional conversation, but as soon as a complex idea is put forward, I need to be able to contextualize the familiar scientific portions of it quickly, and the round trip translation usually helps enough that I can parse it correctly.