Foreign language translation software package

Tender description

Welsh translation memory and terminology management solution for the Welsh Government Translation Service. The Welsh Government Translation Service (TS) wishes to commission a robust and scalable replacement translation memory and terminology management solution suitable for a department of around 45 professional translators and administrative staff, working from several locations across Wales including from home, which is supplemented by an ecosystem of external translation contractors. Translation memory has been integral to the systems and ways of working of TS for some years. The current system has been unable to adapt fully to recent TS requirements and performance is patchy on the Welsh Government’s ICT platform, particularly in the context of homeworking translators. The aim is to explore the benefits offered by an alternative system which would improve the resilience of the translation service, and to have that system in place and fully operational before the end of the 2020-2021 financial year. The essential requirements of the system are: A translation memory system, which will allow the TS’s current data to be imported, and which will provide suggested translations based on: (i) the organisation’s translation memories; and (ii) a secure machine translation source (currently Microsoft Translator via Azure), along with relevant terminology matches from the organisation’s termbases. A terminology management system, which will: (i) allow the TS’s current data to be imported; (ii) work alongside the translation memory system to suggest terminology matches within the translation context; (iii) manage the addition, revision, merging and deletion of terminological data; and (iv) provide export of data for TS’s online termbase, TermCymru, which is hosted on the Welsh Government website. Note that the ability to provide a separate public interface for the termbase is not required under this contract. Desirable requirements are: A terminology workflow solution, which will manage and record flexible research, review and approval processes for new and existing terms; A translation management solution which will allow translation work to be delegated to members of the internal team and to external suppliers while allowing them access to the TS’s repository of translation memories and terminological databases in order to maximise the efficiency of the entire workflow and minimise the cost of external translation. The ability to optionally switch the user interface language between English and Welsh.