Live Speech to Text and Machine Translation Tool for 24 Languages

Description

The European Parliament wishes to support multi-lingual innovation and the digitalisation of all EU official languages through targeted developments. It is therefore aiming to enter into an innovation partnership in order to acquire a licence for a tool that is able to automatically transcribe and translate parliamentary multilingual debates in real time. The tool will also be able to learn from corrections and supporting data as well as from user feedback, so as to enhance quality levels over time. The objective is to provide a useful service for Members of the European Parliament in accessing debates on screen as well as to provide accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing people who currently have no direct access to the debates of the European Parliament.The ultimate goal is to provide an automatic transcription and translation service for parliamentary debates covering the 24 official languages used by the institution. The European Parliament has opted to award this contract under an innovation partnership procurement procedure, which will be carried out in 2 steps: First step of the procedure — exclusion and selection criteria. The candidates should provide the European Parliament with the following documents (annexed to the specifications, to be duly dated and signed): Annex I: Declaration on the tenderer’s honour concerning the exclusion and selection criteria; Annex II: Financial identification form; Annex IV: Information sheet concerning groups of economic operators (if applicable); Annex V: Declaration concerning subcontractors (if applicable). Documents proving selection criteria described in following points of the specifications: 14.1) Legal and regulatory capacity; 14.2) Financial and economic capacity; 14.3) Technical and professional capacity — compliance to the minimum requirements. All candidates who submit the above documents will be evaluated against the exclusion criteria (point 13) and selection criteria (point 14) of the specifications. Selected candidates will be shortlisted on the basis of the level of compliance of their candidature to the technical and professional capacity according to the evaluation method described in point 14.4 of the specifications. A minimum of 3 and maximum of 5 selected candidates will be admitted to the second step of the procedure. Where the number of candidates meeting the exclusion and selection criteria is below 3, the European Parliament may continue the procedure by inviting the candidates with the required capacities. Second step of the procedure —award. Candidates shortlisted during the first step will be invited to submit a tender on the basis of the award criteria set out in point 15 of the specifications. The European Parliament reserves the right to award the contract only after having negotiated the initial tenders. The minimum requirements (see Annex VII of the specifications, point 7) and the award criteria (see point 15 of the specifications) shall not be subject to negotiations. The European Parliament will award a contract to maximum 3 (or less) tenderers best ranked according to the award evaluation criteria. The 3 (or less) contractors will each develop a prototype of the tool as described in point 3 of the specifications (Stage 1 of the Innovation Partnership - integration of 10 languages). At the end of Stage 1, the prototype(s) will be evaluated by the European Parliament in accordance with the methodology described in point 6 of the technical specifications (see Annex VII of the specifications). The contractor whose prototype performs best in the evaluation will continue the work in Stages 2 — integration of 9 languages and 3 — integration of 5 languages of this Innovation Partnership. The contracts of non-retained contractors will be terminated.