雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(19)

It was not that Alan despised doing routine, but as in Computable Numbers arid the ACE report, he tended to veer from the abstract to the detailed in a way that made sense to him, but not to others.

圖靈並不是故意不走尋常路，但就像《可計算數》和ACE的報告一樣，他在處理抽象和具體的關係時，總是用一套他自己覺得有道理的方法，而不考慮其他人。

The development that could have absorbed both his liberated understanding of symbolism, and his willingness to do the donkey work when necessary, was that of designing programming languages.

他對符號的深刻理解，和他埋頭苦幹的精神結合起來，本來可以極大地推動編程語言的設計工作。

But this was precisely what he did not do; and thus he failed to exploit the advantage that a grasp of abstract mathematics gave him.

但他卻沒有做這件事；他沒有利用抽象數學賦予他的絕佳優勢。

In writing the standard routines for square roots and so forth, he had two assistants after October 1949.

1949年10月，圖靈得到了兩位助手，協助他編寫開平方根之類的標準程序。

One was Audrey Bates, a postgraduate student. The other was Cicely Popplewell, She was a Cambridge mathematics graduate with experience of punched cards used in housing statistics.

其中一位是研究生奧德瑞·貝茲，另一位是賽斯麗·波普韋爾，她是劍橋數學家，畢業時具備了用於住房統計的打孔卡片經驗。

They both shared his office, pending the construction of the new Computing Laboratory to house the Ferranti machine.

他們和圖靈共用一間辦公室，直到他們成立了新的計算實驗室，以部署弗蘭蒂公司的機器。

It was not a happy arrangement, for he never really acknowledged their right to exist.

這不是一個很好的安排，圖靈從未真正地承認，這兩個人在他的辦公室裏擁有“存在權”。

On Cicely's first day, he said 'Lunch!' and marched out of the room without telling Cicely where the Refectory was.

賽斯麗來的第一天中午，圖靈喊了一聲“吃飯！”，然後就大步流星地走了，他都沒有告訴賽斯麗食堂在什麼地方。

He would talk away himself to anyone who visited, but would be very annoyed if either of them did.

如果有客人來訪，他可能會和客人聊上很久，但如果哪個助手跟他多言，他就會大爲惱怒。

Sometimes the shell would crack; they persuaded him to play tennis once, and they were amazed the first time they saw him arrive apparently wearing a raincoat and nothing else, which caused some laughs.

他們有時也會得到一些快樂；比如有一次他們邀請圖靈一起打網球，圖靈穿了一件雨衣就來了，惹得大家開懷大笑。

But usually they were glad when, as often happened, he did not come in.

但是通常情況下，當圖靈不來上班時（他經常不來），他們纔會更開心。

He made no allowance for the amount they had to learn, and did nothing to mitigate what Cicely felt as 'an acute inferiority complex' in terms of speed of brain.

圖靈沒有規定他們必須要學會什麼，也沒有幫助賽斯麗減輕在思維速度方面的“嚴重自卑”。