双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第5章:解谜接力赛(71)

Apart from their sheer bulk, the texts teemed with obscurities—abbreviations for units and equipment, map and grid references, geographical and personal code names, pro-formas, Service jargon and other arcane references.

信息中除了正文之外，还有很多隐晦的语言——机构、设备、地图、坐标、位置代码、人名代码、行话、缩写，还有一些秘密标记等等。

One example is furnished by the fact that the Germans made frequent use of map references based on the CSGS 1:50,000 map of France.

比如说，德国人的坐标经常是基于1: 50, 000的法国地图，

This series had been withdrawn from use in the British Army.

而英军已经不用这套地图了，而且无法搞到它。

Unable to obtain a copy of it, GC and CS was obliged to reconstruct it from the German references to it.

政密学校只能通过德国的情报，把它慢慢重绘出来。

The Hut 3 filing systems, therefore, had to mirror the German system as a whole, in order to give meaning to the cipher traffic as a whole.

因此，3号营房的档案系统，需要把德国系统作为一个整体反映出来，来给密码通信赋予意义。

Only when this had been done could the Enigma decrypts yield their real value—not so much in juicy secret messages, but in giving a general knowledge of the enemy mind.

只有做到这一点，谜机的破解才能带来真正的价值。破解它们不是为了得到有趣的谜语，而是要了解敌人要干什么。

Without them, Europe was an almost complete blank, out of which anything could emerge.

没有他们，欧洲就是一片空白，任何事情都有可能出现。

With them, they had some insight into what was possible.

有了他们，才有可能看穿迷雾。