My Ciklopea Story: Nikola Đorđević

Hi Nikola, can you tell us a bit about yourself? How did you end up being a project manager in the language industry?

Hello reader! 🙂

My Ciklopea story began about two years ago. I have a strong background in economics, IT and organization. Before joining the Ciklopea team, I worked in the healthcare industry and for one of the biggest regional IT companies.

I was working on IT process and software development in the healthcare industry. Between jobs, I applied to an open Project Manager position at Ciklopea and it turned out that I had just the right combination of skills and experiences to meet the job requirements. I wanted a new challenge, to explore and master a new IT niche and Ciklopea offered me just that.

What’s the driving force of your job?

People. My colleagues and the clients.

I have been enjoying learning, working and growing with all my teammates and Ciklopea as a company. I aspire to become even better at what I do, to set up the new standards, services and procedures in the language industry, to develop business processes and high quality end products, with the high productivity and the added value for the client from my side.

You committed yourself to website localization and the processes behind it. How did that happen and why?

Given my education and experience, website localization was a natural choice. I took SEO for my master’s degree. Every content, marketing or sales manager understands the importance of SEO and SEM.

Combine that with my IT development experience and you get a perfect formula for a website localization manager. I think that this area is certainly the one where I can really show my strengths.

Which CAT tools make your job easier? Can you name some of their advantages?

I work with practically all of them, but Memsource is my personal choice. The main advantages of Memsource are a very fast and easy assignment of multiple jobs, automatization widgets and the possibility to connect directly with the website.

Once you do some tweaking to adapt the process in accordance with the specific requirements of a client or a website, Memsource is making website localization fast and easy.

How can you automate the website localization process? Are there any specific plugins that can come in handy?

There is a specific plugin for website localization automatization. For the WordPress CMS there is the WPML plugin (WordPress Multilingual Plugin) that, combined with Memsource automation widget, provides an optimum value for the client, high level of process control, reduces the time and the costs and make my job easier. I have more time to focus on the business process development and to create additional services and benefits for the client.

What’s the toughest/most complex thing about it (website L10n)?

Setting the process up. Every website is different and has its specificities. Good analysis, preparation and testing is a must. Another important aspect is having a good information flow with the client’s marketing and sales department in order to tailor the localization process in accordance with to the client’s goals, short-term and long-term strategies.

A quality feedback on the localized material leads to creation of translation assets in a stable and high quality process that provides high quality end product over and over again.

How can the client’s feedback help you? Has there been any situations where it wasn’t helpful and where your suggestions were more practical and beneficial for the client?

There are examples of both. In one project the client edited the translation on their end without informing the project manager and that did lead to complications in the localization process, consistency and accuracy errors.

On the other hand, a quality feedback on the localized material leads to creation of termbases and other translation assets in a stable and high quality process that provides high quality end product over and over again.

When you’re not working hard to deliver high quality solutions, how do you fill your time? What are your passions outside the office space?

I have several fields of interest. Shooting pool, playing basketball and playing PES (gamers will know what PES is 🙂 ) are some of my favourite things to do. Besides that, I like to watch a good movie (at home and at cinema), hit the gym , ride the bike.

I have somewhat funny hobby – I like to tweak OS or game setup to perfection and after the game is running as smooth as possible – my job is done and I usually do not play the game afterwards 🙂

The three things you would take to a desert island?

A knife, a flint and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – it would be a perfect opportunity to fully enjoy, experience and understand my favourite book

If it were up to you, how would you make the world a better place?

Like in the Ancient Greece – I would delete all financial records and redistribute the wealth among the people.

Describe Ciklopea in one sentence.

Added value for everyone involved.