雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第4章:彼岸新星(60)
Turing machines were coming to life, for the first stages of his relay multiplier actually worked.
Alan's rather surreptitious access to the physics workshop was, however, symbolic of the problem that he faced in creating that life, by overcoming the line drawn between mathematics and engineering, the logical and the physical.
艾倫走進了機械加工間，這是他的一小步，但卻是一個重要的標誌，這意味着他越過了數學與工程、邏輯與物理之間的界線，他開始面對這個實體的世界了。As a cipher the idea was surprisingly feeble, the more so when set against his claim of a year earlier.
然後對於一個密碼機來說，艾倫的想法完全不靠譜。
Did he not credit the Germans with being able to find the highest common factor of two or more numbers in order to find the 'secret number' used as key?
他應該注意到，德國人可以計算多個密文的最大公約數，然後就能得到那個作爲密鑰的乘數了。Even if some added sophistication removed this loophole, it would still suffer from the crippling practical disadvantage that a single incorrectly transmitted digit would render the entire message indecipherable.
儘管艾倫後來做了一些改進，彌補了這個漏洞，但仍然還有其它嚴重的問題，比如，在傳輸過程中如果有一位數字發生了錯誤，那麼整個密文都將無法解密。It might be that it was never intended very seriously, and that he had gone off at a tangent in meeting the challenge of designing a binary multiplier.
這一點是他沒有認真想過的，於是他乾脆放棄了這個二進制乘法機的計劃。Every week there were frightening articles about German policy inside and outside the new Reich.
他每週都會收到從英國寄來的《新政客》注，其中會有一些恐怖的關於德國內外政策的文章。Even if the prospect of war work was more the excuse to take up a 'dull and elementary' (but fascinating) sideline than anything like the call of duty, he would not have been alone if he found that Nazi Germany had resolved his qualms about 'morality'.
儘管對艾倫來說，做一些軍事工作只是爲了有趣，並不是爲了什麼責任感，但納粹的種種行爲已經使他相信，參與這種工作，不再需要有道德上的不安。There was also another machine he had in mind, but this had nothing to do with Germany, except in the very different sense that it came out of the work of Riemann.
艾倫還思考着其它機器，但與德國沒什麼關係，這是一個完全不同的想法，Its purpose was to calculate the Riemann zeta-function.
他想要計算黎曼的ζ函數。Apparently he had decided that the Riemann hypothesis was probably false, if only because such great efforts had failed to prove it.
他認爲黎曼猜想很可能是錯誤的，因爲這麼多大量的努力都不能證明它。
