雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(111)

This might easily have been the end of the matter, but Alan saw Arnold again on Oxford Street on the next Monday afternoon.

本來故事到這裏也就可以結束了，但是無巧不成書，在之後的那個星期一下午，圖靈在牛津街上又碰到了阿諾德。

Arnold offered a feeble excuse for his failure to appear, and this time Alan invited him home immediately. Arnold did as Alan suggested, stayed until the late evening, and agreed to come another time on 12 January. Alan sent him a pen-knife as a Christmas present.

阿諾德爲他的失約找了個藉口，然後圖靈又邀請他到家裏坐坐。阿諾德跟着圖靈去了，並且一直待到很晚，還答應在1月12日會再來。圖靈寄給他一個鉛筆刀，作爲聖誕禮物。

The BBC Third Programme had now arranged for a sort of Brains' Trust on the subject of whether machines could be said to think. Sometime near Christmas 1951, Alan visited David Champernowne at Oxford.

這個時期，BBC又做了一檔節目，關於機器是否能夠思考注。聖誕節前後，圖靈去看望了晨佩儂。

He had an early tape recorder, and they made a spoof version of the discussion, with Champ putting on the Arts Man voice appropriate to the discussion of beauty and other high-minded concepts to which the machine could not aspire.

他有一臺早期的錄音機，他們把討論寫成了一個惡作劇的版本，Champ用於討論美和機器無法企及的其他高層次的藝術的聲音。

Fred Clayton came later and was duly fooled. He, meanwhile, had got married, just as he said he would, and had been fortunate in his appointment to a lectureship in classics at the University College at Exeter.

弗雷德過了一會兒也來了，他此時已經結婚，並且順利地當上了埃克塞特大學的古典文學講師。

He was much concerned with developing a thesis about parallels between classical and English literature, and consulted Alan about the probability and statistics necessary in such comparisons.

他此時正在做一項關於古典文學和英國文學的對比研究，爲此向圖靈請教了一些概率和統計知識。

He was also interested in the significance of astrology in the classics, and picked Alan's brains for some elementary astronomy.

他還對占星術的意義很有興趣，所以又跟圖靈請教了一些基礎的天文知識。