article: The 32-year-old South Korean speaks no less than six of them - Korean, English, French, Arabic, Mandarin and Japanese. And he says he plans to learn more. With such linguistic skills Mr Lee doesn't have much personal need for translation services, but after friends at university in Seoul started asking him for help with their English homework he was inspired to set up just such a company. Launched in September 2012, his business - Flitto - now has more than five million users around the world, and enjoys revenues of about $2.1m (£1.4m) a year. Unlike most professional translation companies, it doesn't directly employ translators. Instead, Flitto invites members of the public who know more than one language to offer their services via its website and mobile phone app. Today it has one million translators in 170 countries on its books, who offer translations between 17 different languages. They all get paid for each piece of work they do, from which Flitto takes a small percentage. In the first feature of new six-part series called "The Making of Me", we look back at key stages in Mr Lee's life and the development of his business. Due to his father's job with a global company, Mr Lee spent most of his childhood living overseas. He was born in Kuwait, where he spent his first four years, before the family then moved to UK. After three years in the UK, the family relocated again, this time to the US, before moving to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia 24 months later. Educated in international schools, he was quick to pick up English, French and Arabic, the first three languages Mr Lee added to his native Korean. "I met all these different people from different countries," he says. "What I realised is that all human beings are the same you know, but because of the different languages we misunderstand each other." After seven years in Saudi Arabia, Mr Lee's family moved back to South Korea where he finished high school, and then went to the country's prestigious Korean University. It was at college that friends of his started to ask him to help them translate their homework into English, which was required as part of their courses. "So friends would say to me, 'Simon, if you translate this homework into English I'm going to buy you dinner'," he says. "And more and more friends were asking me to do that, so I didn't have enough time." Realising the business potential of translation services, Mr Lee started getting other multilingual friends to help out, and his idea for setting up a company was born. Flitto was launched in September 2012, but rather than start the business in South Korea, Mr Lee decided to relocate to London. He said he chose to do this for two main reasons - he wanted to temporarily get away from his friends who had well paid jobs in corporate South Korea, and because London is such a multi-cultural city. He says: "I was starting a business, so I had no money. So what
summary: It is fair to say that entrepreneur Simon Lee has a flair for languages.