B -- Post Editing of Machine Translations

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Acquisition Management Division, intends to award a sole source acquisition to the Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 for the Information Technology Laboratory, Speech Group, NIST, for a one-year base period with four one-year option periods. The Linguistics Data Consortium is a non-profit consortium organization of linguistics researchers with extensive proven experience in managing and supervising the production of linguistics data resources of the highest quality, on a compressed schedule. The NIST Speech Group conducts open evaluations of speech and language technologies. This procurement is part of an evaluation for speech transcription and machine translation for another Government agency. This procurement relates to the evaluation of machine translation (MT). The intended evaluation of the quality of the MT will be the number of edits necessary to make the MT output (1) have exactly the same meaning as the human reference translation and (2) be readily understandable. This work is for the provision of editors to perform this “post-editing” process. All editors must have an extremely high sensitivity to fine shades of meaning and polished skill at capturing that meaning with the absolute minimum number of edits. The MT outputs and reference data to be edited will be provided in a machine-readable, XML-based textual format, which will be read directly by editing software. The Government intends to solicit and negotiate with a single source under the authority of FAR 13.5 Test Program for Certain Commercial Items. Interested parties capable of responding to the requirement may submit a capability statement specifically identifying their ability to accomplish this requirement. Responses are due within ten days after publication of this notice. Responses shall be reviewed solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed acquisition following consideration of responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.