POPULATION SERVICES INTERNATIONAL REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FOR THE PROVISION OF PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATION, INTERPRETATION, AND CAPTIONING SERVICES

Scope of Work:  PROVISION OF PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATION, INTERPRETATION, AND CAPTIONING SERVICES

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Introduction

PSI is a non-profit organization working to improve the health of poor and vulnerable people in
developing countries. PSI has offices in approximately 40 countries, with approximately +6000
employees. Country offices are supported by staff providing services in programmatic and
administrative areas. Collectively this group is referred to as “Global Services”, with most of
this staff based in the Washington, D.C. area. Global Services is divided into four “cones” which
encompass over 20 departments. For further information on PSI’s size, scope, structure, and
strategy refer to www.psi.org.

Population Services International seeks one or more translation, interpretation, and captioning
services vendors with a wide range of language capabilities, ability to meet multiple, high
volume orders with short delivery times with a high degree of accuracy, and mechanisms to
leverage technology to create cost efficiency where appropriate.
Currently, the major languages spoken across the PSI network include:

Amharic
Arabic
Burmese
Cambodian
English*
French/African French

Hindi
Lao
Malagasy
Portuguese*
Somali
Latin American Spanish*
Swahili
Tibetan
Urdu

Vietnamese

*Company must be able to translate/interpret to and from the officially supported languages.

Translation, interpretation, and captioning services are critical to the effectiveness of both the
internal operations of our organization which is headquartered in DC and spans globally in South
and Central America, Africa and Asia, as well as serving our customers across the network.
Currently, PSI has no centralized source of translation, interpretation, and captioning services.
US-based departments and country teams seek and contract independent of each other. We seek
to streamline the process by contracting with one or more companies that, combined, meet all the
needs across the organization, in terms of language support, certifications, speed, accuracy,
scalability, and cost-effectiveness.

All technical proposals must include a completed Technical Capability Checklist (see ANNEX 2
below), with items submitted in the order listed in the checklist template. If a capability is
partially available or with caveats, mark the capability as “partial” and include an explanation in
comments.

Financial proposals must include subscription/service fees, implementation fees and technical
support fees, including incremental cost differences for varying volume of demand.
The Company must have the ability to translate/interpret highly technical communications
(written and/or oral) as well as those used for marketing, promotion and sales. Experience in
global health and working with international non-governmental organizations (NGO) is
preferred.

Bid Preparation

Bidders should submit their responses to this RFP to include:
A. Technical Proposal
B. Financial Proposal

A Technical Proposal

Your proposal should provide basic information about your Company and relevant service
offerings. It should have a section addressing each of the following areas:
(a) Company Profile
(b) Approach
(c) Responsiveness to the Scope of Work
(d) If bidding on translation and/or captioning services, 3 sample translations/captioning
products between English and Latin American Spanish, Portuguese, and French/West
African French that show technical and non-technical translations/captioning
(e) References
Responses should include the following information:
a. Company Profile
• Describe the Company on an overall basis, both nationally and internationally (if
appropriate)
• Summarize the Company’s qualifications and experience of the activities described in the
scope of work
• Provide a detailed track record of previous similar work undertaken
b. Approach
• Provide general qualifications and a description of the Company’s work translating
documents, interpreting, and providing captioning services between multiple languages,
including but not limited to: English, French/West African French, Portuguese, and Latin
American Spanish. Include approach to ensuring accuracy, and economies of scale
(leveraging common organizational lexicon, previous work, balancing human and
computer-generated translations for cost effectiveness, etc). Companies may respond to
any or all three areas of service required.
• Describe the key personnel to be utilized on the engagement along with resumes of key
personnel. Indicate their degree of expertise and prior experience, which would be
appropriate for the engagement.
• Describe what methods of evaluation does Company use to monitor and ensure high quality
translation/interpretation/captioning of their own personnel.
• If bidding on translation services, describe the Company’s experience dealing with a range
of document formats including but not limited to: .doc, .pdf, .pptx, .html, .indd, .ai, and
.psd., and the internal tools it uses for its own processes.
Describe the Company’s ability to translate/interpret highly technical communications as well
as those used for marketing, training, and other internal and external communications.
• Describe Company’s experience working with global health and working with
international non-governmental organizations (NGO) is preferred.
• Describe the Company’s invoicing process and its ability to work on an Indefinite Quantity
Contract (IQC) basis, invoicing task work to the various requesting departments and/or
countries of a large organization directly.
• Describe the Company’s capability to quickly provide interpretation and/or captioning
services, and/or deliver translated documents with and without formatting requirements in
responseto respond to sudden, high volume demand while maintaining adherence to service
level agreement.
• Describe the communication and collaboration process between Company and its clients
from inception to delivery.
• List all federal certifications that may reflect Company’s preferred status for government
contracts, such as small business, minority owned, woman owned, veteran owned, etc.
• If bidding on translation and/or captioning services, provide 3 sample
translations/captioning products between English and Latin American Spanish,
Portuguese, and French/West African French that show technical and non-technical
translations/captioning.

c. Responsiveness:
• Identify key personnel who will be available for consultation or discussion;
• Describe any current or past relationships your organization may have with PSI, and if it
is a potential conflict of interest. If there is a potential conflict of interest then please
explain how this risk will be mitigated.
d. References:
1. Submit three (3) client references; international NGO clients preferred but not necessary.
2. Provide any other information to demonstrate the Company’s capability in relation to the
Scope of Work

B Financial Proposal
Bidders pricing should be based on the following:
For Services performed during the Term, Consultant will be paid in accordance with the rates set
forth in Annex 3 hereto [Annex 3 should list Consultant’s employees and their daily or hourly
rates (and overhead or indirect rates, as appropriate and conditions for discounts to be applied ]].

ISSUE DATE : October 19, 2022 
LAST DATE FOR RECEIPT OF CLARIFICATION QUESTIONS BY PSI : October 26, 2022
LAST DATE FOR RESPONSES BY PSI : November 2, 2022
RFP CLOSING DATE AND PLACE : November 9, 2022 Washington, DC
PROPOSALS MAY BE DELIVERED BY EMAIL To : Mary Williams
mwilliams@psi.org
Population Services International
1120 19th Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

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