Treatment Action Campaign

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) invites submissions for the translation of its magazine, Equal Treatment. Equal Treatment has a wide readership across Southern Africa. The translations will be from English to Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, Venda, Afrikaans and Sotho. In general, ten pages from each issue will be selected for translation. The magazine is published five times a year and the average number of words on a page is 400. Therefore, the number of translated words per issue is:

350 words per page x 10 pages x 6 = 21,000 words.

Since there are 5 issues per year, this works out to 105,000 words translated per year.

Successful submissions will be chosen according to quality, price, time required for translation, reliability, breadth of languages covered and communications proficiency. The contract is for two years subject to our funds and the quality of service provided. It can be terminated at any point by the TAC.

Specifications for tender:

• Price quotes for 20,000; 30,000; 40,000 words per issue.
• Amount of time required for translations.
• Submission of sample translations into Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, Venda, Afrikaans and Sotho of the partial article below which will appear in the next issue of Equal Treatment. Please note, the winning tender will be reimbursed for this translation automatically as it will be part of the set of articles that need to be translated for the next issue of Equal Treatment.

Deadline: Friday 7 March, 2008 at 5pm

Please send all submissions to et@tac.org.za.

For further information, contact Nathan Geffen on 084 542 6322.

Sample Partial Article for translation

The Sexual Offences Act

Compiled by Jo Gorton from texts by Doron Isaacs and Yoliswa Dwane

The Sexual Offences Act came into effect in December 2007. After seven years of negotiations it is supposed to be fully operational by June 2008. This legislation dramatically changes the laws that deal with sexual offences such as rape in South Africa. Here we explain some of the most important developments of the new Act.

Changed definitions of rape

In the new Act rape is defined as an unlawful and intentional sexual penetration with a complainant without his or her consent.

There are two important things about the new definition of rape. Firstly, the wording in the definition is gender neutral. This means the law now recognizes that both women and men can be raped. In our old laws only women could lay charges of rape. The second thing to note is the use of sexual penetration in the new law instead of vaginal penetration. Our old laws did not recognize forced anal penetration as rape, nor did it recognize that being penetrated with an object, such as a bottle or a knife, was rape. Now, according to the new definition, any object or body part that enters your anus or vagina without consent is an act of rape.

Act introduces new crimes

The Act makes it an offence for a person to force another person to rape or sexually assault someone. It also protects children and people living with mental disabilities from sexual offences.

New rules about procedures and evidence

The Act has the following important rules about evidence:

• It scraps the cautionary rules. This means that any evidence given by the rape survivor cannot be treated with caution. As it used to be, evidence given by women or children who had reported a crime could be questioned on the basis of them being survivors of that very crime.
• It does not allow judges or magistrates to publicly consider the sexual history of the sexual abuse survivor.
• It does not allow the court to consider the cultural beliefs of the alleged rapist.
• It does not allow the court to consider the relationship between the sexual perpetrator and the survivor. This will have a strong effect on cases that involve married couples or people in relationships.
• It does not allow the court to draw any bad conclusions about the survivor because he or she did not report the crime to the police immediately after it happened.
• It imposes life imprisonment for sexual offences against children under 12 in the case of girls and under 14 in the case of boys.
• It creates a National Registry of sexual offenders once they are convicted.

Rights of the Rape Survivor

The new Act describes a system of care for survivors of sexual assault. This includes post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and HIV testing of the alleged criminal.

PEP

The new law grants every rape survivor the right to receive PEP at a public health establishment. PEP prevents the transmission of HIV if taken within 72 hours after being raped.

...

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