Updated: September 19, 2023
The following questions have been posed by potential vendors in connection with the Request for Proposals: Spanish Translation Services for a Drupal 10 Website. This RFP was issued by the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC) on September 13 , 2023. Responses follows each question.
A(1): The key contact for managing the translations will be the Mass Legal Help Project Manager, Marlena Idrobo. (Note that we are focusing on translation, rather than localization.)
A(2): Electric Citizen are our Drupal developers. https://www.electriccitizen.com/ They are located in Minnesota.
A(3): At least initially, the Mass Legal Help Project Manager will be creating the translation orders. Over time, we may give some additional staff members this capacity as well.
A(4): As a nonprofit, we are very budget conscious. We do not have a fixed buget for the translation project at this time, but will be looking carefully at the estimates so that we can translate as much content as possible, and so that we can sustain the accuracy of the translated content in future years. (Note that we are focusing on translation, rather than localization.)
A(5): We do have TMGMT on our Drupal 7 website, but did not use a connector; translations were manually uploaded. We used a variety of translators and translation companies for our previous translations.
Q(6): We don’t have a specific vendor currently in place for Mass Legal Help translations.
A(7): That depends on how many vendors respond.
A(8): We may translate individual articles into languages other than Spanish, but it is probable that these would be in PDF format rather than HTML, and likely would not be sent via the connector. We may consider translating the site as a whole into additional languages in the future, but that is beyond the scope of the current RFP.
A(9): We hope to get the structure in place for translations in November and December, including develping style guides and glossaries. The English site is scheduled to launch in mid January. We would like to have some key articles translated before then, as well as the framework of the website. We then hope to send articles for translation on a regular basis, with the goal of completing as many translation as possible by the end of June.
After all articles on the initial site are translated, we will be reviewing English content on a yearly basis and hope to make the corresponding changes to the Spanish versions as well.
A(10): We are flexible as to the time zone of the Translation Company project manager, so long as they are available for calls or meetings for at least several hours during an EST work day.
A(11): We haven’t decided yet. We anticipate that a large chunk of the content, especially initially, will require human translation.
A(12): No, all orders will be sent from the Website Project.