Canada - ACAN – Translation and Revision of Court Decisions

Description

ACAN – Translation and Revision of Court Decisions
Tender Notice
Status – Active
Dates
Publication date: May 29, 2024
Amendment date: None
Closing date and time: June 12, 2024 at 2:00 p.m.(Eastern Daylight Time)
Details
Reference number:
Solicitation number: 5X001-24-0028
Region of opportunity: Canada
Region of delivery: NCR
Notice type: Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN)
GSIN: R109D – Translation Services
Trade agreements – This requirement is subject to the following trade agreement
Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA)
Tendering procedure: ACAN
Procurement entity: Courts Administration Service
End-user entity: Courts Administration Service
Contact person: Leticia Obeng Asante
Email: Leticia.Obeng-Asante@cas-satj.gc.ca
Address: 90 Sparks Street, Ottawa, ON K1A 0H9, CA
1. Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN)
An ACAN is a public notice indicating to the supplier community that a department or agency intends to award a contract for goods, services or construction to a pre-identified supplier, thereby allowing other suppliers to signal their interest in bidding by submitting a statement of capabilities. If no supplier submits a statement of capabilities that meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, on or before the closing date and time stated in the ACAN, the contracting officer may then proceed with the award to the pre-identified supplier.
2. Definition of Requirements
The Courts Administration Service (CAS) requires the services of a supplier that is highly specialized in the translation and revision of judicial decisions in order to translate and revise Federal Court (FC) and Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) decisions. The translations will be solely from English to French. The translated and revised documents must be ready to publish on the FC and FCA websites without needing to undergo an additional revision.
2.1. Objectives
CAS’s objective is to translate and revise court decisions as per the following:
a. To meet CAS’s legal requirement to publish FC and FCA decisions in both official languages as per Part III of the Official Languages Act.
b. To establish external capabilities to translate and revise FC and FCA decisions from English to French.
c. To ensure that accurate, high-quality translations and revisions of FC and FCA decisions can be produced to ensure equivalency of the versions in both official languages, prior to their publication on the FC and FCA websites.
d. It is necessary to produce high-quality translations and revisions that ensure equivalency of the versions in both official languages in order to reflect Parliament’s intention (in the Official Languages Act) to ensure the substantive equality of both linguistic groups.
2.2. Tasks
The supplier must translate and revise FC and FCA decisions.
The supplier must provide translations that ensure that both linguistic groups in Canada have access to English and French decisions that are identical in meaning and style.
The supplier must revise the decisions that they translate.
The supplier must provide revised translations that can be published on the FCA and FC websites without needing to undergo an additional revision by CAS’s language experts (its jurilinguists). The decisions published on the websites must therefore contain no more than two errors per 1,000 words.
3. Work Location
The supplier must host all services on its own server located in Canada. The supplier must be available to meet with CAS’s management team at CAS’s Ottawa location or via the Teams or Zoom platforms, when required.
4. Background
CAS is governed by the laws of Parliament. Parliament’s intention is to ensure that individuals from both sides of Canada’s linguistic duality have equal access to judicial decisions in both languages. CAS is presently using the services of various translation suppliers. On the basis of their contracts with CAS, these suppliers provide translation services only. The translations received are subject to a very thorough revision by CAS’s jurilinguists, who ensure that quality requirements are met.
CAS is seeking the services of a supplier that will both translate and revise FC and FCA decisions. The quality of the revised translations must match the quality needed for the decisions to be published on the FC and FCA websites, namely, they must contain no more than two errors per 1,000 words.
The translation will be exclusively from English to French.
All decisions submitted to the supplier for translation and revision will be in the public domain.
5. Criteria for Assessment of the Statement of Capabilities (Minimum Essential Requirements)
Any interested supplier must demonstrate by way of a statement of capabilities that it meets the following requirements:
5.1 Translation Services
a. Ability to translate judicial decisions.
b. Ability to translate 400,000 to 800,000 words per year.
c. Ability to provide translations that accurately reflect the meaning of the source text and that comply with spelling, grammar, syntax, and usage rules and with standard legal writing guidelines.
d. Translated documents must have embedded accessibility features, in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
5.2 Revision Services
a. Ability to revise translated texts to ensure content accuracy as well as compliance with relevant usage and terminology.
b. Ability to revise translated texts so that they meet French-language quality standards and comply with CAS’s legal writing guidelines.
c. The quality of revised judicial decisions must match the quality required for them to be published without needing to be revised by CAS jurilinguists—i.e., the supplier must be able to continually and consistently produce revised translations containing no more than two errors per 1,000 words, whether those errors be major or minor.
5.3 Experience
The supplier must clearly demonstrate in their statement of capabilities that the translators and revisers have a minimum of 5 years of experience in translating and revising judicial decisions.
5.4 Education
The translators and revisers must have, at minimum, a bachelor’s degree in law or translation.
6. Applicability of the Trade Agreements to the Procurement
This procurement is subject to the following trade agreement:
Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA)
7. Set-Aside Under the Procurement Strategy for Indigenous Business
This procurement is not subject to any set-asides for Indigenous suppliers.
8. Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement(s)
This procurement is not subject to a Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement.
9. Justification for the Pre-Identified Supplier
The pre-identified supplier was selected based on the following capabilities:
The Centre for Legal Translation and Documentation (CLTD) specializes in the translation and revision of legal texts, including but not limited to pleadings, judgments, legal publications, hearing documents and judicial decisions.
The CLTD is able to translate and revise from 400,000 to 800,000 words per year.
The CLTD has resources that are translator-editors who each have more than 5 years of experience in providing accurate translation and revision services for legal documents. They are knowledgeable about legal terminology and concepts. The CLTD has been able to demonstrate, through their previous contracts with relevant judicial organizations (Ex: Court of Appeal of Ontario, the Federal Court, and the Federal Court of Appeal) that their translation and revision services is accurate, precise, adapted to context, linguistically accurate, and ready to publish on the websites without needing to be revised internally. In terms of the error rate, the CLTD showed that it was able to achieve an error rate of 0.1%, which translates to fewer than two errors per 1,000 words.
CAS intends to enter into a contract with the CLTD for it to provide translation and revision services for decisions of the FC and the FCA from English to French.
10. Government Contracts Regulations Exception(s)
The following exception, which is provided for under paragraph 6(d) of the Government Contracts Regulations, is invoked for this procurement: “only one person is capable of performing the contract.”
11. Exclusions and/or Limited Tendering Reasons
None.
12. Ownership of Intellectual Property
Canada intends to retain ownership of any foreground intellectual property arising out of the proposed contract on the basis that the main purpose of the contract is to generate knowledge and information for public dissemination.
13. The Period of the Proposed Contract
The proposed contract is for a period of one (1) year from the date of the award with an irrevocable option to extend the period by up to three (3) additional one-year periods under the same conditions.
14. Cost Estimate of the Proposed Contract
The estimated value of the contract for one (1) year is $260,000 (GST/HST extra).
The estimated value for option years 1, 2 and 3 is $260,000.
The total value, including option years, is estimated at $1,040,000 ($1,175,200 with taxes).
15. Name and Address of the Pre-Identified Supplier:
Name: Centre for Legal Translation and Documentation (CLTD)
Address: 800 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5
16. Suppliers’ Right to Submit a Statement of Capabilities
Suppliers who consider themselves fully qualified and available to provide the services described in the ACAN may submit a statement of capabilities in writing to the contact person identified in this notice on or before the closing date and time of this notice. The statement of capabilities must clearly demonstrate how the supplier meets the advertised requirements.
Documents may be submitted in either of Canada’s official languages.
17. Closing Date and Time for a Submission of a Statement of Capabilities
The closing date and time for accepting statements of capabilities is June 12, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time).
18. Enquiries and Submission of Statements of Capabilities
Enquiries and statements of capabilities are to be directed to:
Leticia Obeng Asante
Manager, Procurement and Material Management
Gestionnaire, Services de l’approvisionnement et gestion du matériel
Courts Administration Service | Service administratif des tribunaux judiciaires
90 Sparks St. | 90, rue Sparks
Ottawa, ON K1A 0H9
Leticia.Obeng-Asante@cas-satj.gc.ca
19. Definitions and links to the websites of the courts
Federal Court: https://www.fct-cf.gc.ca/en/home
Federal Court of Appeal: https://www.fca-caf.ca/en/home

Opportunity closing date

12 June 2024

Value of contract

to be confirmed