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chapter 7CAT tools in international organisationsLessons learnt from the experience of the LanguagesService of the United Nations Office at GenevaMarie-Josée de Saint Robert 1United Nations Office at GenevaThe language staff at the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) has a veryselective attitude towards language technologies despite the fact that these technologiesare widely spread in the work environment of translators. Tests and pilotprojects with computer-assisted translation software have been conducted overthe past five years at UNOG and have amply shown that such software is neithera source of improvement of quality nor a source of improvement of quantity intranslation. Obstacles to efficiency gains that have been identified prior to theintroduction of CAT remained the same as those identified after its introduction.New obstacles also appeared with the introduction of CAT in the work of languagestaff of an international organisation that point to the following conclusion: theusefulness of work habit changes may not be found in the area in which thechanges occur but in other somewhat unexpected areas. In the case of translationin international organisations, as translation is not an isolated activity, synergieswith other, sometimes far related business processes are required.1. IntroductionThe United Nations may seem to be the perfect environment for the deploymentof language technologies yet, surprisingly enough, translators and language staffin general do not rely heavily on tools. Technological innovations have to be userfriendlyand time-saving to convince translators to use them. Between 2002 and2004, a CAT test conducted at the United Nations Office at Geneva concluded that1. The opinions expressed in this article are my own. This paper is an updated and expandedversion of a paper presented for the First International Workshop on Language Resources forTranslation Work and Research, chaired by E. Yuste Rodrigo at the LREC 2002 (Third InternationalConference on Language Resources and Evaluation). Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain,in May 2002.