Everybody Gets a Contract: EU Awards €67.5m to 31 Vendors

The European Union knows how to keep its language service providers busy. On 27 and 28 January 2016, the European Parliament released contract awards for translation services with a total value of EUR 67.5m. A full 31 language service providers made the cut. The contracts were tendered out by the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Parliament on behalf of the European Court of Auditors, the Committee of Regions, and the European Economic and Social Committee.

Of the 24 official languages in the European Parliament, there were a total of 22 languages represented in this series of contract award notices. The contracts were described as the supply of translation services of documents “relating to the interests and activities of the European Union.” Well, that is quite broad then.

The contracts do not include “the systematic and full translation of the verbatim reports of the proceedings of the plenary part-sessions of the European Parliament.”

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Luxembourg-based Amplexor, in the award notice still referred to as Euroscript, walked away with the most business by a wide margin. The company was named as the “main” contractor in nine of the 22 lots with a total value of EUR 33.7 million. Greece-based Intertranslations secured the “main” contracts for English and Italian, which total EUR 7.7 million. Slovenian Iolar, meanwhile, won the lots for Croatian and Slovene with a total value of roughly EUR 4.4 million. Whereas Prague-based Presto made it on to ten lots as a subcontractor, the company did not secure a single lot as the “main” vendor. The remainder of the lots was spread fairly widely among the competing vendors.

The award notices makes no mention of how the work will be divided among the main vendor and the subcontractors. The original contract notices from Tenders Electronic Daily show that the framework agreement for these contracts have a maximum duration of four years. The contracts will be awarded for an initial period of one year and will be renewed tacitly on a yearly basis.

UPDATE (Feb 1, 2016): Slator has learned that the main contractor indeed receives the entire volume tendered out unless the main contractor is unavailable to take on a project or the contract is withdrawn due to performance issues. During this so called period of suspension “assignments will be offered to the other Contractors who have signed secondary contracts for the target language in question”, according to a draft of the main contract available on the European Parliament’s website.

Slator has listed the contract awards below, starting with the highest contract value together with the official legal name of the LSPs (you are welcome):

German – EUR 6.385m

euroscript Deutschland GmbH (Main)

Xplanation Language Services

French – EUR 5.767m

euroscript Services (Main)

Intertranslations

IDEST Communication SA

Danish – EUR 5.476m

euroscript Deutschland GmbH (Main)

Xplanation Language Services

Lionbridge Denmark

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

English – EUR 4.552m

Intertranslations (Main)

SDL Belgium

RWS Translations Ltd

Wessex Translations Ltd

Swedish – EUR 4.540m

Lingsoft Language Services OY (Main)

euroscript Baltic SIA

Intertranslations

SDL Sweden AB

Dutch – EUR 4.434m

euroscript Luxembourg S.à r.l. (Main)

Xplanation Language Services

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

Intertranslations

Finnish – EUR 3.880m

Lingsoft Language Services Oy (Main)

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

euroscript Baltic SIA

Italian – EUR 3.163m

Intertranslations (Main)

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

euroscript Luxembourg S.à r.l.

SeproTec Multilingual Solutions S.L.

Spanish – EUR 2.927m

euroscript Portugal, Unipessoal Lda (Main)

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

Intertranslations

SeproTec Multilingual Solutions

Maltese – EUR 2.910m

Transcripta Translation Services Ltd (Main)

Global Translation Solutions Ltd

Estonian –  EUR 2.699m

euroscript Baltic SIA (Main)

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

Tõlkebüroo Pangloss OÜ

Skrivanek s.r.o.

Slovene – EUR 2.62m

IOLAR informatika v besedi d.o.o. (Main)

SDL, podjetje za programsko opremo in prevajanje, d.o.o.

Ekspert-S d.o.o.

Veris d.o.o.

Latvian – EUR 2.494m

euroscript Baltic SIA (Main)

ORCO SA

Skrivanek s.r.o.

Ad Verbum

Czech – EUR 2.493m

Milan Havlin — Presto (Main)

Intertranslations

exe a.s.

Artlingua AS

Slovak – EUR 2.167m

Milan Havlin — Presto (Main)

euroscript Magyarország Kft.

Intertranslations

Lithuanian – EUR 2.144m

Alumnus UAB (Main)

euroscript Baltic SIA

Metropolio vertimai UAB

Skrivanek s.r.o.

Greek – EUR 2.095m

Attimedia a division of Veloss International SA (Main)

Intertranslations

ORCO SA

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

Hungarian – EUR 1.856m

euroscript Magyarország Kft. (Main)

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

SCOPE Interkulturális Kommunikáció Szolgáltató Kft.

TranzPress Kft.

Croatian – EUR 1.725m

IOLAR informatika v besedi d.o.o. (Main)

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

ORCO SA

Ciklopea

Polish – EUR 1.658m

euroscript Polska Sp. z o.o. (Main)

Presto — Překladatelské Centrum s.r.o.

Agencja MAart Sp. z o.o.

Summa Linguae S.A.

Romanian – EUR 1.524m

SC International Languages SRL (Main)

S.C. Euroscript-Certitude S.R.L.

P. & K. Barbopoulos O.E. — Paspartu Translation Services