雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第5章:解謎接力賽(41)

Sheer numericAl size, therefore, may be insignificant, compared with the logical properties of the cipher system.

因此，數量的大小與密碼系統的邏輯特性相比，就顯得外強中乾了。

The crucial discovery was that something like this could be done for the actual military Enigma, with its plugboard swapping taking place both before and after entry into the rotors of the basic Enigma.

這裏面還有一個至關重要的發現，那就是該思路同樣可以用於轉盤兩端同時使用配線板的軍用型謎機。

But the discovery was not immediate, nor was it the product of a single brain.

但這並不是馬上就發現的，也不是由一個人發現的。

It required a few months, and there were two figures primarily involved.

這是花了兩個月的時間，主要由兩個人發現的。

For while Jeffries looked after the production of the new perforated sheets, the other two mathematical recruits,

因爲傑弗裏忙於製作新的打孔卡片，所以由另外兩個數學家，

Alan and Gordon Welchman, were responsible for devising what became the British Bombe.

艾倫·圖靈和戈登·威爾奇曼，來負責設計一種新機器，這種機器就是後來的英國版炸彈機。

It was Alan who had begun the attack, Welchman having been assigned to traffic analysis,

破解工作首先由艾倫開始，威爾奇曼被臨時派去進行通信分析了。

and so it was he who first formulated the principle of mechanising a search for logical consistency based on a 'probable word'.

艾倫首先想出，要將猜詞和邏輯相容性搜索的過程進行機械化。

The Poles had mechanised a simple form of recognition, limited to the special indicator system currently employed;

波蘭人已經機械化了一個簡單的識別形式，但是它依賴於特定的指示信號。

a machine such as Alan envisaged would be considerably more ambitious,

艾倫設想的這種機器更有野心，

requiring circuitry for the simulation of 'implications' flowing from a plugboard hypothesis, and means for recognising not a simple matching, but the appearance of a contradiction.

它要使代表結果的電流，流過一個假想的配線板，而且並不是簡單地識別一個匹配，而是找出其中的矛盾。