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.

All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet - barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work.

But there's also a strong emotional core to counterbalance the experimentalism, with some incredibly moving passages around the narrator's relationship with her (also female) German teacher. It's beautiful.

The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. PROVERBS 12:22

I suspected learning a language would be both useful and enjoyable (I love memorising lists of things), and would get rid of the embarrassment of being monolingual at 21. I'd been obsessed with reading for as long as I could remember, the only thing I'd ever thought I might want to be was a writer, but I was much better at crafting sentences than at stringing plots together.

I teach Korean translation at the British Centre for Literary Translation summer school, so I see an emerging generation too, who are around my age. I'm hoping to find time to mentor, and to help emerging translators to a first contract through Tilted Axis.

Life doesn't take itself seriously for long. Joy leaves an imprint even in the hardest sorrow.