The EU has
long been a promoter of linguistic diversity. It has three procedural languages
(English, French and German) and 24 official languages, into which all
Directives and Regulations must be translated. In order to carry out its
day-to-day business, it relies heavily on translation and interpretation services, which are used to
ensure that all member states have equal access to information.
Huge translation contract announced
In order to
meet its commitments in terms of supporting linguistic diversity, the European
Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation has just announced that it is
putting a huge translation contract out to tender. The contract covers an
estimated translation volume of 556,000 pages per year. It follows the European
Parliament issuing a call for tenders in April 2019 for the translation of
445,000 pages per year, along with 76,000 pages for the European Economic and
Social Committee, 47,500 pages for the European Committee of the Regions and
40,500 pages for the European Court of Auditors.
Details of the
latest tender are shared in this article from Slator, which reveals that the ‘TRAD19’ contract will be divided into
lots based on language pairings, with 49 lots altogether. The largest lots
cover translation from English to French (33,000 pages annually), English to
German (26,000 pages) and English to Czech and Croatian (at 22,000 pages
annually for each language).
The huge
tenders have been issued in advance of current translation contracts coming to
a close over the course of 2019/20. The new TRAD19 contract will run from 1
July 2020 to 29 February 2024.
EU translation requirements
The EU’s
translation needs call for a unique blend of business translation, financial translation
and legal translation expertise. The contracts aren’t for everyone. Slator
reports that margins tend to be tight, meaning that there isn’t too much scope
for profit from the contracts, sizeable though they are. The bidding process
also tends to be labour intensive. However, the payoff is guaranteed work from
a highly reputable client for nearly five years – a very attractive proposition
indeed!
While
freelance translators are unlikely to be in a position to bid for the contracts
due to their size and the intensity of the tendering process, they nonetheless
create opportunities to work for those agencies that will be bidding.
