雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第3章:思考什麼是思考(76)
It was something more abstract.
And the operations were to be operations on symbols, rather than on things of any particular mass or chemicAl composition.
所有的操作，都在符號之間進行，沒有任何有質量或者化學成分的東西。Alan had to abstract this quality of being determined, and apply it to the manipulation of symbols.
因此，艾倫需要把這種機器的特點抽象出來，應用到對符號的操作中。
People had spoken, as Hardy did, of 'mechanical rules' for mathematics, of 'turning the handle' of a miraculous machine, but no one had actually sat down to design one. This was what he set out to do.
哈代所說的超自然機器的搖把，從沒有人真正想要設計一個，而艾倫現在就要做這件事。For although he was not really 'the very unsophisticated outsider' of whom Hardy spoke, he attacked the problem in a peculiarly naive way, undaunted by the immensity and complexity of mathematics.
儘管他並不是哈代說的“完全不懂數學的人“，但他現在確實在用非常天真的方法，在面對這個問題。He started from nothing, and tried to envisage a machine that could tackle Hilbert's problem, that of deciding the provability of any mathematical assertion presented to it.
他從零開始，想要製造一臺機器，來解決希爾伯特的問題，自動判斷任意數學命題是否可以被證明。他似乎忘了數學是多麼宏偉而複雜。There were, of coure, machines in existence which manipulated symbols. The typewriter was one such.
能夠操作符號的機器，當然是存在的，比如說打字機。Alan had dreamt of inventing typewriters as a boy; Mrs Turing had a typewriter; and he could well have begun by asking himself what was meant by calling a typewriter 'mechanical'.
艾倫還是孩子的時候，就一直夢想着自己製造打字機。圖靈夫人有一臺打字機，所以他很早就開始思索，人們說打字機是機械的，這是什麼意思。It would mean that its response, to any particular action of the operator, was perfectly certain.
它的意思就是，對於操作者的任何操作，它的反應都是完全確定的，One could describe in advance exactly how the machine would behave in any contingency.
人們可以準確地預測，在按下任何一個鍵後，這機器會有什麼動作。But there was more to be said even about a humble typewriter than that.
人們可以準確地預測，在按下任何一個鍵後，這機器會有什麼動作。The response would depend upon the current condition, or what Alan called the current configuration, of the machine.
即使是一個簡易的打字機，它的反應也會取決於特定的情況，艾倫把這稱爲當前狀態。In particular, a typewriter would have an 'upper case' configuration and a 'lower case' configuration.
也就是說，打字機會有一個“大寫狀態”和“小寫狀態”，在不同的狀態下，它會有不同的行爲。This was an idea which Alan put in a more general and abstract form.
艾倫抽象並推廣了這個想法，He would consider machines which at any time would be in one of a finite number of possible 'configurations'.
他想象一種機器，有有限種狀態，在某一時刻，它處於其中一種狀態。Then if, as with the typewriter keyboard, there were only a finite number of things that could be done to the machine, a complete account of the behaviour of the machine could be given, once for all, in finite form.
然後，就像打字機的鍵盤一樣，這臺機器可以做有限種動作，這樣一來，我們就可以規定這臺機器在所有情況下的行爲，因爲這也將是有限的。
