Happy people look young. You’re really afraid of getting older, aren’t you? You should only be afraid of getting less happy.

Possibly the best thing about the whole experience is that Kang and I are now really good friends. It's as much of a pleasure and privilege to know her as a person as it is to translate her work. She's been over for two UK publicity tours, which means lots of time to chat on trains etc., and she was hear all last summer for a writer's residency in Norwich, where I got to meet her son too.

Instead of fearing what might happen if I failed, I should be excited about what could happen if I succeeded!

Plus, publishing's inherent conservatism, means that what little did get through was weighted towards the commercial end of the scale, which is not the kind of writing that excites me.

Not only are unpaid internships exploitative, they're one of the main forces keeping publishing in this country a primary white middle-class industry, which has a direct knock-on effect on what gets published and how.

This and the small sample size inevitably leads to stereotypes - sweeping family sagas from India, 'lush' colonial romances from South-East Asia. Mother and daughter reconciling generational differences through preparing a 'traditional' meal together. Geishas. And even if something more exciting does manage to sneak through, it gets the same insultingly clichéd cover slapped on it anyway, so no one will ever know.

Alongside Han Kang, there's only one other author I've chosen to translate so far - Bae Suah. Her work is radical both stylistically and politically, influenced by her own translation practice (she's translated the likes of Kafka, Pessoa, and Sadeq Hedayat into Korean). Her language is simply extraordinary.