雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第4章:彼岸新星(2)
At first, this was not known at Cambridge, and Alan wrote to his mother on 4 May:
I saw Mr Newman four or five days after I came up. He is very busy with other things just at present and says he will not be able to give his whole attention to my theory for some week or so yet.
後來過了四五天，我遇到紐曼先生，他當時在忙別的，說這幾周沒時間看我的理論。However he examined my note for C.R. and approved it after some alterations.
但他看了我對《法國科學學刊》的評論注，做了一些修改並認可了。
I also got it vetted by a French expert, and sent it off.
我又找了一位法國專家幫我檢查，然後寄出去了，I have had no acknowledgement of it, which is rather annoying.
目前還沒收到回覆，有點煩人。I don't think the full text will be ready for a fortnight or more will probably be about fifty pages.
我想在兩個星期之內完成全文，大概會有五十頁，It is rather difficult to decide what to put into the paper now and what to leave over till a later occasion.
眼下還很難決定留下哪些內容，刪掉哪些。When Newman did read it in mid-May, he could hardly believe that so simple and direct an idea as the Turing machine would answer the Hilbert problem over which many had been labouring for the five years since Gdel had disposed of the other Hilbert questions.
五月中旬，當紐曼開始讀艾倫的論文時，他幾乎無法相信，圖靈機如此簡單地解決了希爾伯特的問題。在哥德爾解決了前兩步之後，這個問題已經讓大家花了五年時間了。His first impression was that it must be wrong, for some more sophisticated machine would be able to solve the 'unsolvable problem', and that one would then continue on and on.
紐曼的第一個感覺是，圖靈肯定是搞錯了，應該存在某種更精密的機器，來解決那個不可解決的問題。But finally he satisfied himself that no finitely defined machine could possibly do more than was allowed by the Turing construction.
但是紐曼最終確信了，任何有限定義的機器，都不可能做到圖靈機做不到的事。
