双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第9章:退隐山林(111)

This might easily have been the end of the matter, but Alan saw Arnold again on Oxford Street on the next Monday afternoon.

本来故事到这里也就可以结束了，但是无巧不成书，在之后的那个星期一下午，图灵在牛津街上又碰到了阿诺德。

Arnold offered a feeble excuse for his failure to appear, and this time Alan invited him home immediately. Arnold did as Alan suggested, stayed until the late evening, and agreed to come another time on 12 January. Alan sent him a pen-knife as a Christmas present.

阿诺德为他的失约找了个借口，然后图灵又邀请他到家里坐坐。阿诺德跟着图灵去了，并且一直待到很晚，还答应在1月12日会再来。图灵寄给他一个铅笔刀，作为圣诞礼物。

The BBC Third Programme had now arranged for a sort of Brains' Trust on the subject of whether machines could be said to think. Sometime near Christmas 1951, Alan visited David Champernowne at Oxford.

这个时期，BBC又做了一档节目，关于机器是否能够思考注。圣诞节前后，图灵去看望了晨佩侬。

He had an early tape recorder, and they made a spoof version of the discussion, with Champ putting on the Arts Man voice appropriate to the discussion of beauty and other high-minded concepts to which the machine could not aspire.

他有一台早期的录音机，他们把讨论写成了一个恶作剧的版本，Champ用于讨论美和机器无法企及的其他高层次的艺术的声音。

Fred Clayton came later and was duly fooled. He, meanwhile, had got married, just as he said he would, and had been fortunate in his appointment to a lectureship in classics at the University College at Exeter.

弗雷德过了一会儿也来了，他此时已经结婚，并且顺利地当上了埃克塞特大学的古典文学讲师。

He was much concerned with developing a thesis about parallels between classical and English literature, and consulted Alan about the probability and statistics necessary in such comparisons.

他此时正在做一项关于古典文学和英国文学的对比研究，为此向图灵请教了一些概率和统计知识。

He was also interested in the significance of astrology in the classics, and picked Alan's brains for some elementary astronomy.

他还对占星术的意义很有兴趣，所以又跟图灵请教了一些基础的天文知识。