An early morning delivery brought a mighty package from the book printers, containing the digital proof of Mr McArthurs book. At a potential spine width of several inches, this was in marked contrast with the expected 18mm. The mystery was explained by the use of thicker photographic paper, printed on one side - a relief! Mr McArthur dropped by to collect the draft for review.
The days activities concentrated on translations of German texts into English for two companies. The first translation suffered a delay as I had tried using an Open Source program OmegaT for the first time over the weekend. Saving the translated file into the same directory as the origination file resulted in wiping the source file clean. Lesson learnt, I created a separate destination folder and finally obtained the literal translation.
Then begins the more difficult task, converting the literal translation, with the idiosyncrasies of grammar and sentence construction of the source language, into more native English. One task completed, the next translation beckoned.
This evening, a meeting with Mrs Guðbjörnsdóttir from Iceland, who was travelling through the UK on business for the company Ishestar, a bespoke Icelandic holiday specialist. What came through was an abiding undercurrent of love for Icelandic horses.
The first ancestors of the Icelandic horse arrived with the Vikings in the 10th century and were subsequently bred into the current small horse. From 982 AD the Icelandic parliament banned the import of horses to Iceland, so that the breed has been pure bred for over 1000 years. Also, once an Icelandic horse leaves the island, it is not permitted to return.
As a microscopist, I noted the double coat for thermal insulation in the no doubt chill winters. An immediate endearing feature is their bred ability for an additional gait, the tölt, which is apparently ground covering yet comfortable at a variety of speeds for the rider.
The television news appears to be divided between the increasingly dire situation in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata and the impending Royal Wedding. The wedding dominates today with the momentous news that there are commoners in the bride to be's lineage on her mother's side.
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