The British university world was as well insulated from the twentieth century as anyone could hope for; and so often it saw his eccentricities, not his vision, offered vague tributes to cleverness, not serious criticism of his ideas, and remembered the bicycle stories rather than the great events.
正如人们所想的,英国学术界与二十世纪是割裂的。这个圈子能感受到图灵的反常,但却无法感知他的梦想,他们称赞他的智力,但却排斥他的观点,记得他的自行车,但却忘了他做过多么伟大的贡献。
But although nothing if not an intellectual, Alan Turing never truly belonged to the confines of the academic world.
然而,图灵虽然是一个学者,却从来没有真正地属于这个圈子。
Lyn Newman, who had the advantage of seeing that world at close quarters but from outside, articulated64 more clearly than anyone else this lack of an easy identity; she saw him as 'a very strange man, one who never fitted in anywhere quite successfully.
琳·纽曼有机会走近图灵,当然她也只能从外部观察,她觉得图灵是个非常奇怪的人,从来不遵循主流的成功道路。
His scattered efforts to appear at home in the upper-middle class circles into which he was born stand out as particularly unsuccessful.
以图灵的出身背景而言,他最后混成这样,可以说是相当失败。
He did adopt a few conventions, apparently at random, but he discarded the majority of their ways and ideas without hesitation or apology.
他倒也迎合过一些传统,但却不是有意为之,总体而言,他叛逆大多数人的思维方式,而且丝毫没有犹豫或紧张。
Unfortunately the ways of the academic world which might have proved his refuge, puzzled and bored him...'
学术界本来可以给他提供一个避风港,但结果却使他更加困惑和厌倦。
There was an ambivalence in his attitude to what was, despite all its concomitant deprivation, a privileged upbringing: he jettisoned most of the paraphernalia of his class but in inner self-confidence and moral responsibility remained the son of Empire.
他背离了自己的阶级,但却对此怀有一种矛盾的态度,他厌恶那些教条,但内心却仍然认为自己是帝国的一分子。
There was a similar ambiguity in his status as an intellectual, not only in his disdain for the more trivial functions of academic life, but in the mixture of pride and negligence with which he regarded his own achievements. There was another uncertainty in his attitude to the privilege of being a man in a male-dominated world.
对于自己的学者身份,他也有着类似的态度,一方面他对学术界的繁文缛节嗤之以鼻。但另一方面,他又得意于这个圈子赋予他的成就感和荣耀。