雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(102)

By this time it was being widely said that it was the Cambridge approach, which made concession to the human user, that held the key to the future.

當時的人們普遍認爲，這是劍橋的一個巨大進步，他們擁有了開啓未來的鑰匙。

The Cambridge group called themselves the 'space cadets' and the rest, the 'primitives', and Alan Turing had made himself an arch-primitive by insisting on being able to follow the Manchester machine's operations digit by digit, although on another level, he was the boldest Dan Dare of them all, embarrassing the responsible scientists with his anthropomorphic view of machines.

劍橋的團隊，把自己比作"宇航員"，其他人都是"原始人"。圖靈是原始人中的原始人，因爲他堅持要一位一位地跟蹤機器的操作，但是在另一個層面，他卻是最勇敢的原始人，因爲他對智能機器的想法，讓那些嚴謹地科學家們感到十分尷尬。

The application of computers to commercial purposes received serious discussion, and M.J. Lighthill, the new Professor of Applied Mathematics at Manchester, proposed that by 1970 'the use of the machine shall permeate the whole undergraduate course.

計算機在商業中的廣泛應用，引起了嚴肅的討論。曼徹斯特應用數學系的教授M·J·萊特希爾說："到1970年，恐怕所有的本科課程都將圍繞這種機器。

This complaint at the base-32 notation espoused by Alan was to be vindicated; it would soon be thought absurd to expect ordinary users to adjust themselves in this way, although in 1951 this was far from clear.

這樣的抱怨很快就得到了證明，因爲32進制的算術，無論圖靈多麼擁護，但想要讓普通使用者適應它，都是根本不可能的。但在1951年，這一問題還不是很清楚。

This conference was Alan's last appearance as a contributor to the programming or operating of computers, and he was already passing into legend—a ghost from the past in a science without history.

這是圖靈最後一次以計算機先驅的身份露面，這是一門沒有歷史的科學，而圖靈卻成了這門科學的一個神話傳說。

Mike Woodger gave a talk about the relative performance of the Manchester and NPL machine instruction codes.

在會議上，伍格做了一些對比演示，關於曼徹斯特的機器和國家物理實驗室的機器的機器指令集。

Alan had invited him to stay at Hollymeade for the week of the conference.

在會議期間，圖靈邀請他住在冬青居，

His guest would have been rather frightened if he had known that Alan was homosexual, but of this he remained unaware.

他並不知道圖靈是同性戀，否則一定會毛骨悚然。

What he did encounter, however, was the great muddle of pots and pans full of weeds and smelly mixtures, in which Alan was pursuing his desert island hobby, seeing what chemicals he could make out of natural materials, and in particular doing some electrolytic experiments.

他實際上只看到了亂七八糟的鍋碗瓢盆，裏面裝滿了野草和各種刺鼻的混合物，這就圖靈賴以度過退隱餘生的業餘愛好，從天然材料中提取化學物質。

Mike Woodger made a big hit when he admired the brick path, but did not do so well when Alan tried to explain his progress with morphogenesis.

伍格很喜歡他的磚頭小路，但卻無法理解他講的形態形成學。