双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第8章:面朝大海(266)

Modern men had to protect themselves particularly carefully when they were confronted by Alan Turing, and they kept the compartments completely separate.

人们在面对图灵时，总是小心翼翼地划出一条界线。

So perhaps too did Alan Turing, when confronting his own situation.

甚至图灵面对自己时，也在试图保持距离。

Behind the singleminded Shavian figure that he cut, especially after the war, acting out in public a set of ideas with relentless intensity, and going to the stake like a modern Saint Joan, there had always been a more uncertain, contradictory person.

特别是战后，在他斩断的独断专行的沙维亚形象背后，他以无情的力度在公众面前表现出一套思想，并像现代圣女贞德一样走向危险境地，总是有一个更加不确定、矛盾的人。

In particular there lay the uncertainty of all his relationships with institutions, neither fitting in, nor presenting a serious challenge.

他与社会之间的关系，似乎总是存在着不确定性，他无法适应，但又没有发生特别激烈的冲突。

In this respect he shared something with many people deeply attracted to pure mathematics and science—never sure whether to regard social institutions as Erewhonian absurdities or as plain facts of life.

在这个方面，图灵与其他一些纯粹的数学家有着相同的困惑——这个社会到底是荒唐的，还是本该如此。

Making a game out of anything, like G.H. Hardy (and like Lewis Carroll), he reflected the fact that mathematics could serve as protection from the world for one who was not so much blind to worldly affairs as only too sensitive to their horror.

他索性像哈代（还有刘易斯·卡洛尔）一样，把这个世界看作一场游戏。这本身反映出一个事实，即对于他们这些对恐惧异常敏感的人们来说，数学是逃避社会的最好工具。

His off-hand, self-effacing humour also shared something with the response of so many gay men to an impossible social situation: in some ways directing a bold, satirical defiance at society—yet ultimately resigned to it.

他那种随性、自嘲式的幽默，则反映了他内心的另一个侧面——他蔑视这个社会，但又不得不屈服。