Provision of French Translation Services

By way of this Request for Expression of Interest (REOI), the United Nations Procurement Division is seeking potential vendors to provide high-quality translation services into French from English. Given the sensitivity of the documents of the United Nations due to the Organization's intergovernmental nature, the quality of translations must be ensured prior to delivery. The duration of the contract would be for a period of 2 years plus 3 additional options to extend for 1 year each at the sole discretion of the United Nations. Interested vendors must possess the necessary technical expertise and capacity to provide the services. Vendors expressing interest must be registered with the United Nations Global Marketplace (UNGM) so that they can participate in the Request for Proposal at a later stage.The United Nations reserves the right to split the award between two or more vendors. SERVICES REQUIRED: Type of documents: The documents submitted for translation will cover a wide range of subjects, including texts of a general/political/social, economic/financial, legal or scientific/technical nature, and will be in different formats and of varying lengths. Source languages: The source languages will be English. Volume of translation: The United Nations annual requirements for contractual translation services into French and related typing services are estimated at 10,000,000 words. Vendors will be requested at a later stage to provide an evidence of ability to fulfil these requirements including at least 3 years of historical data/evidence of ability to deliver the indicated word count. The number of words provided is based on estimations only; there is no minimum quantity guaranteed by the United Nations. Accuracy: The vendor shall guarantee the accuracy of translated documents, i.e. faithfulness to the original text and correct use of grammar and terminology. Established United Nations terminology must be consistently and strictly adhered to through use of UNTERM, the official United Nations terminology database (unterm.un.org/). Reference documents can be obtained through the United Nations Official Document System (ODS) (ods.un.org). Where no references are provided by the United Nations, the vendor shall undertake its own research. The vendors who express interest to particpate in this solicitation will be requested at a later stage to submit supporting documentation such as (THESE ARE NOT REQUIRED NOW): 1. A list of source languages from which they can provide translation services into French. 2. A list of texts previously translated, preferably in the general/political/social, legal, economic/financial and technical/scientific fields, indicating title and word count for each document. 3. References from the three largest clients they provided translation services to in order to prove their capacity and expertise to provide satisfactory translation for all types listed above. 4. A minimum of twenty (20) CVs maintaining the ratio of 3:1 translators to revisers and proving the possession of the required expertise, experience and knowledge. Details of the technical evaluation criteria and other particular requirements will be provided under the Request for Proposal at a later stage. NOTE: this REOI is an opportunity for vendors to Express their Interest. This is NOT the actual solicitation. The UN will be issuing an RFP solicitation for these services at a later stage. Specific Requirements/Information It is highly desirable for vendors expressing interest to have translation/revision experience with international/regional/governmental organizations. At a later stage, vendors expressing interest shall be required to provide a list of international/regional/governmental organizations to which they have provided translation services, including details of the volume and types of documents translated into French. The United Nations reserves the right to request and review the full CV's and/or references of any translator/reviser assigned to a job.