The United States government has issued an unusual RFP for translation services: The target languages are all indigenous to the US.
The contracting agency, the Office of Indian Economic Development (OIED), is part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which manages programs related to federally recognized American Indian Tribes. OIED has partnered with the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for this contract. This will create a mechanism through which various agencies can request translation into Native languages.
The RFP features a set-aside for Indian Small Business Economic Enterprises, meaning that only companies meeting certain revenue and ownership requirements may apply. OIED would prefer to award a single contractor work for all four languages.
“This is a one-year project that will respond to federal agency requests for ongoing and diverse Native Language translation that will be specific to the federal agency needs,” the RFP explains, adding that the contract may be extended more than once, but only for an additional period of up to six months. The contract is slated to cover work between January 20, 2025 – January 19, 2026.
The ultimate goal is to ensure that a variety of content, ranging from official documents and signage to websites, is accessible to the “widest possible audience of the Tribal Nations.”
There are 574 federally recognized Tribal Nations, 229 of which are in Alaska. The remaining 345 are located across 35 other states.
The RFP specifies that it will deal with “more prevalent native languages,” likely referring to those with the most speakers.
Stats and Translation Requests
The four target languages are Yup’ik (Central dialect), Cherokee (Western dialect), Ojibwe (Western dialect), and Navajo. The contract estimates that each language will require 610 hours of translation — a somewhat uncommon way of pricing translation — for a total of 2,440 hours.
According to the American Community Survey for 2009-2013, Navajo is the most-spoken indigenous language in the US, with nearly 167,000 speakers, 35,250 of whom self-report as speaking English less than very well. The latter would be considered individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP).
The other three languages have fewer speakers overall, and fewer individuals with LEP, including about 6,000 speakers of the Alaska Native language Yup’ik; 1,460 speakers of Cherokee; and 1,100 speakers of Ojibwe.
With relatively small populations of people with LEP, the impetus for the RFP goes beyond numbers.
Indeed, the outgoing Biden-Harris Administration issued on December 9, 2024 a “10-year National Plan on Native Language Revitalization,” described as charting “a path to help address the United States government’s role in the loss of Native languages across the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawai’i.”
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Some Tribal Nations have resources to handle (certain) translations on their own. The Cherokee Nation Translation Department, for instance, offers free translations for nonprofit uses related to education, health, and legal services. But there are limits.
“Due to the large volume of requests, Cherokee Nation Translation does not accept unsolicited documents such as poetry, scripts, screenplays, and book manuscripts for translation,” its website states. Nor does it translate tattoos or “names in Cherokee for children, family, members, [or] pets”.
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