Translation for the Bodies of the European Union requires high quality standards, such as
- consistency with preceding EU texts,
- exact referencing of, and correct quotation from published documents,
- consistent use of correct terminology.
To meet these standards continuously and thus maintain a high-ranking position among contractors, translators need to spend a significant amount of time on terminology research and referencing.
For example, the Tender Specifications of the European Commission (TRAD19) sets out among others that
- “references to and explicit or implicit quotes from published documents must be checked and quoted correctly”, or
- “correct terminology must be used consistently throughout the text in line with the relevant domain, reference documents and appropriate naming conventions”.
Similar requirements are found in the Tendering Specifications of the Court of Justice of the European Union , which ask contractors to ensure:
- “strict use of the legal terminology used in the reference documents (source and target languages);
- rigorous citation of the relevant legislative and/or judicial texts;
- use of the necessary legal databases (of the European Union and national)”.
The Tendering specifications of the European Parliament also include similar standards under the chapter “Quality requirements”: The Contractor must ensure that “all references to documents already published or any reference material, including the terminology of the reference material quoted, are consulted and used correctly”.
This is all the more important given that the EU institutions regularly assess the overall performance of framework contracts by checking the quality of the delivered pages and grading them from “very good” to “unacceptable”. The failure to satisfy the quality requirements may lead to worse ranking during the evaluation process vis-a-vis other contractors, in more severe cases penalties, or in the worst case even termination of the framework contract.
But you don’t need to make a trade-off between high quality and time-efficiency! We developed our online concordance search tool to reduce time and effort spent on ensuring compliance with all of the above standards. Juremy is designed for the needs of EU translators, as its functions boost linguists’ productivity by saving time on terminology research and allowing room to more detailed and in-depth referencing, which is an essential standard value when assessing EU translations.
Test Juremy’s functionalities now by registering on our website, and benefit from the free trial! If you like Juremy, subscribe to our monthly or annual plan, and support us in developing Juremy’s functionality further.