Automated multilingual services for the Commission

In the framework of the EURAMIS programme, the European Commission has published a restricted call for tender for infrastructure and components of automated multilingual services. The Commission staff are required to handle documents in the nine official Community languages (...

In the framework of the EURAMIS programme, the European Commission has published a restricted call for tender for infrastructure and components of automated multilingual services.

The Commission staff are required to handle documents in the nine official Community languages (72 language pairs) and, in the interest of efficiency, automated services help cope with the multilingual aspects of the document production process. Automated tools (machine translation, term banks) have been developed and are now operational in the Commission.

The subject of the present call for tender is:
- To develop and maintain existing tools;
- To integrate different tools into combined multilingual services;
- To enhance and migrate the technical infrastructure in order to enable easy user access throughout the Commission;
- To provide a service infrastructure allowing other institutions, Member State administrations and external users to apply for access to automated multilingual services.

In order to achieve these goals four lots are defined:
- Lot 1: Development and maintenance of the EC-SYSTRAN machine translation system;
- Lot 2: Development and integration of multilingual tools into multilingual services for translators and end users;
- Lot 3: Provision and development of informatics infrastructure modelling the Commission's informatics architecture (PC, PC-NFS, TCP/IP, Ethernet-LAN, X.25 MVS-mainframe) and providing computer power for linguistic development work. Office space and equipment is also part of this lot;
- Lot 4: Provision of multilingual services for third parties based on X.400 e-mail and on-site installations.

Tenderers may submit an offer for one, several or all of the lots. The number of service providers to be invited to tender is between five and twelve.

The initial contract period is for one year. This duration could be extended annually to a maximum of two more years.
Requests to participate may be submitted to:

European Commission
DG XIII/E (Contract Management)
Jean Monnet Building (B4/41)
L-2920 Luxembourg
Tel. [phone]; Fax [phone]