Insights from Vienna: Why, in international UN tenders, you’re delivering more than just translation — you’re delivering assurance
Even as artificial intelligence makes waves across the translation services industry, the biggest international projects make one thing crystal clear: technology alone simply isn’t enough. Process stability, capacity infrastructure, and absolute reliability continue to be the defining factors for global market success.
With this in mind, our agency’s representatives headed to Vienna for the highly anticipated International Procurement Seminar 2026, focused doing business with the UN.
Our goal was not just to get a peek behind the scenes of international procurement, but above all, to prove that České překlady has the cutting-edge technological infrastructure and the expert team needed to deliver for even the most demanding global clients.
Uncompromising standards for quality and processes
The seminar, held at the Czech Embassy under the auspices of CzechTrade (and in partnership with partner embassies), gave us a fantastic opportunity to meet directly with procurement officers from major UN agencies. These discussions brought the needs of today’s international environment sharply into focus: demand is high for top-tier translation, interpreting, and localisation, backed by the capacity to handle large volumes of work and to consistently maintain precise specialist terminology.
The sky-high standards for translation accuracy really show in the absolute requirement to stick to official UN terminology — all guided by the powerful UNTERM database. Tackling highly specific requirements within multilingual projects is a stumbling block for many translation service providers — but for us, it’s a chance to put our know-how to work, with over 22 years of market experience behind us.
Assurance as the main product
Meeting face-to-face with the people behind contracts worth hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars has laid bare the tough reality of global trade. Going through these negotiations really brings home the extent of the administrative complexities — and just how much pressure there is on capacity in certain languages. It’s also becoming clear that even at these high levels, inconsistent terminology remains the real sticking point.
Our agency’s co-owner, Lukáš Utíkal, chimes in: “Deciding on tenders of this scale is one thing — actually handling them administratively and capacity-wise is a whole different challenge. Vienna gave me one big takeaway: in tenders this size, you’re not just selling the client a translation or a technology. You’re giving them the confidence that this huge, complex process won’t fall apart because of you. And honestly, without human oversight and a real grasp of the client’s complexity, it just can’t be done.”
This fact backs up our belief that thorough work with terminology databases and robust quality assurance (QA) processes — the bedrock of our translation agency’s long-term approach — are a must at the highest levels of our business.
Synergies and inspiration in international trade
Beyond great business opportunities, the event provided a fantastic networking space with other leading companies from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Connecting with top innovators and industry leaders reinforced our belief that a commitment to continuous development and outstanding quality is the key to success across every sector.
Our time at the International Procurement Seminar 2026 made one thing crystal clear: demand for premium language services on the global market is strong — and growing. If anything, the pressure is intensifying where it counts the most — a 100% guarantee, process reliability, a high level of expertise, and stability backed by years of market experience. These are exactly the values global institutions are looking for — and they’re what we’ve been delivering at České překlady for years.
Ready to take your business global, or tackling big translation projects? We’ve got you covered! Reach out to us. We’d love to chat with you about how we can be of service to you.
