雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(95)

Mostly this came out in her efforts to improve Alan's domestic life, with instructions on the right and wrong ways to perform each little routine. ('Mother says ...', Alan would explain to Robin, with a half-amused, half-exasparated twinkle.)

她想提高圖靈的生活自理能力，讓他按照規矩，按部就步地做好每一件事。（圖靈常帶着哭笑不得的表情對羅賓說："我媽媽說……"）

Nor was their contact very frequent; Alan would visit Guildford about twice a year, annoying both mother and brother by announcing his imminent arrival with a telegram or postcard and no more.

他們的聯繫並不頻繁，圖靈基本上每年回格爾福特兩次。他事先會發電報或明信片，說他即將抵達，但不再多說一字，這令他的母親和哥哥很惱火。

His mother made the journey to Wilmslow once in the summer each year.

他的母親每年夏天都會去一趟威姆斯洛。

Besides the postcards there might be a few telephone calls; Alan finding for instance that they both liked the stories on Children's Hour and telling her when a good one was coming.

除了明信片之外，他們之間還會通幾次電話，比如說，因爲他們都喜歡《兒童時光》，所以圖靈每次看到好故事，都會告訴她。

But Mrs Turing did like to have the feeling of involvement in Alan's work, and felt happier with the biology than with the computers.

對於圖靈的工作，圖靈夫人很樂於參與，她喜歡那種參與感。相比於計算機，她對生物學更有興趣。

Although she really had no clue as to what he was doing at Manchester, she would help with the wild flowers and the big maps.

雖然她不知道圖靈在曼徹斯特做什麼，但她會幫他採集野花，還有標記地圖。

With her nineteenth-century optimism she construed it in terms of usefulness to humanity, bringing him closer to the Pasteur of whom she had long ago dreamed.

她總是帶着19世紀的樂觀，從人類的益處着想，她覺得圖靈離她的偶像巴斯德越來越近，

Perhaps, she speculated, it might lead to a cure for cancer!

她甚至猜測，圖靈將引領人類攻克癌症！

It was not a foolish connection to draw, but it was not his motive.

這樣的想法確實遠大崇高，但卻並不是圖靈的真正動機，

Nor was there any way of knowing where his Faustian dabblings might lead this time; they were just as relevant to the state-controlled embryology of Brave New World.

沒人能知道他的浮士德遊戲會引領什麼，只知道那與《美麗新世界》中的控制胚胎學有關。

Even if his practical methods had something in common with the naive natural history of the past century, and even if it meant a return to childhood fascinations, his work lay firmly within the great modernisation of biology, in which the technical advances of the 1930s were being followed by the application of the quantitative analysis so triumphant in physics and chemistry.

雖然他的實驗方法還帶着上個世紀的天真，雖然這只是他孩童時期的興趣，但他探索的這些東西，無疑走在了現代生物學的最前沿。在30年代，隨着技術的進步，量化分析應用到了物理和化學。

The problem of life could no longer be allowed to lag behind; they had to know how its machinery eciation in the Computing Laboratory was on a more down-to-earth level.

生命科學也不能落後，人們必須要知道，生命機制到底是如何運作的。計算機實驗室對圖靈的認識，則是在一個更實際的層面上。