My Ciklopea Story: Miloš Matović
CiklopeaWe’re rounding up this year’s cycle of Ciklopea stories with our Miloš Matović. He told us about how he got into Ciklopea and what he was doing before he took over the role of the company’s creative leader and became a marketing manager.
How did you get into the language industry?
I have been fascinated with the phenomenon of language and cross-cultural communication for as long as I can remember. I was fortunate enough to realize that my career would be somehow related to linguistics and foreign languages either through teaching or translating quite early on – at least since I was 15 – so I’m not quite sure if that was a fully conscious decision or a touch of destiny (if these two are indeed separate things), but here I am. It was the most natural career choice for me.
How many languages can you speak and/or understand?
Not including my native “Central South Slavic diasystemic”, I can speak four languages with varying degrees of proficiency and understand about eight or nine.
How did you become a marketing manager?
I started off as a translator, then moved to content production, later on to localization project management, quality control, transcreation, consulting, pretty much checked out every position in the language industry. That provided me with an invaluable, deep insight into the work, expectations and challenges of all stakeholders in the localization process, from the clients to the linguist and technical teams, and, given my creative string, it turned out that I was best suited for a marketing manager. And I’m not complaining. 🙂
What is the driving force of your job?
Its challenging nature. Developing marketing and suggestive content for an intellectual service and making it clearly understandable is something that takes a lot of thinking and always includes a bit of risk-taking and some exploration of uncharted territories – and that is the beauty of it all.
Is there anything you would change about your career path with hindsight?
No. Of course, I did make some mistakes along the way (Who doesn’t?), but these mistakes took me where I am today and provided me with an experience that I simply couldn’t have acquired any other way. Hindsight is a great thing and an excellent learning device, but only if we don’t forget the original context of the events – and people often tend to forget it.
What is your piece of advice to your younger colleagues?
Take a good look at yourself, discover what it is that you are good at and that you like doing. Find your own voice. Get to know it, tune it up, use it. There are millions of others who may or may not be more successful than you are, but there is only one you – and there will always be.
What is your secret superpower?
I can speak Greek.
Who is your hero and why?
I have always had huge admiration for the maverick figures who weren’t afraid to swim against the tide if that was what it took for them to achieve their creative freedom and independence, because only that particular kind of person is in the position to discover and say something truly meaningful about this crazy world of ours, often with a few unpleasant truths thrown in. Orson Welles is a huge inspiration to me in this regard. Branimir Štulić. David Lynch.
What is your motto or favorite quote?
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
The three things you would take to a desert island?
I would take music, so I’d have to find a way to pack all albums by Sparks and by Georgios Dalaras. I would also take a suitcase filled with books that require careful reading and contemplation – Herodotus, Homer, the Bible, the Quran. And a Swiss Army knife, of course.
Describe Ciklopea in one sentence.
My natural environment.