雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第3章:思考什麼是思考(84)
With this done, it followed that one particular machine could simulate the work done by any machine. He cAlled it the universal machine.
It would be designed to read description numbers, decode them into tables, and execute them.
它要先讀出描述數，解碼成行為表，然後運行。It could do what any other machine would have done, if it were provided with the description number of that machine on its tape.
只要給它提供另一個機器的描述數，它就能做把它們編譯成表並執行。
It would be a machine to do everything, which was enough to give anyone pause for thought.
它可以做任何一個機器能做的事，只要告訴它那個機器的描述數。It was, furthermore, a machine of perfectly definite form. Alan worked out an exact table for the universal machine.
它是一個能做任何事情的機器，足以讓人歎為觀止。更重要的是，它有着非常明確的形式，艾倫設計出了通用機器的行為表。This was not the trouble with mechanising the Cantor process.
現在對於康託機來説，這也不是麻煩。The difficulty lay in the other requirement, that of producing the tables, in their 'alphabetical order', for the computable numbers.
還有一個問題是，對於一個可計算數的列表，如何按順序為其中的每個數編寫行為表。Suppose that the tables were encoded as description numbers. In practice, they would not use up all the integers;
如果把這些運行表編碼成描述數的話，它們並不會按順序用到每一個整數。in fact, the system Alan devised would encode even the simplest tables into enormous numbers.
實際上，在艾倫設計的系統中，即使是最簡單的運行表，也會編碼成一個非常大的描述數。But that would not matter. It would be essentially a 'mechanical' matter to work through the integers in turn, and to pass over those which did not correspond to proper tables. That was a technicality, almost a matter of notation.
但這也並不要緊，只需要通過一個機械的過程，按順序逐個處理每個整數，把那些"不能代表合法的行為表的數"跳過去就行了，這也只是技術問題。The real problem was more subtle.
然而，真正的問題，反倒看上去更加微不足道。The question was this: given (say) the 4589th properly defined table, how could one tell that it would produce a 4589th digit?
比如，現在遇到了第4589個合法的行為表，你怎麼判斷它能不能產生第4589個數字？Or indeed, that it would produce any digits at all?
或者説，你怎麼判斷它能不能產生數字？It might trundle back and forth in a repeated cycle of operations for ever, without producing more figures.
沒準它會陷入死循環，根本不會產生數字，It this were the case, the Cantor machine would be stuck, and could never finish its job.
然後整個康託機就卡殼了，永遠無法完成它的工作。
