雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第7章:運轉起來(31)
This greatly extended the role of the machine in bringing Fish to a state of 'cornucopian abundance'. As with the Bombe, it was not that the Colossus did everything.
It was at the centre of an extremely sophisticated and complex theory, in which far from being 'dull and elementary', the mathematics involved was by now at the frontiers of research.
這裏的數學家們，此時正處於一個極爲尖端而複雜的理論的漩渦中。There were in fact many ways in which the Colossus could be used, exploiting the flexibility offered by its variable instruction table.
實際上，巨人機利用可變的指令表，可以用來解決很多方面的問題。
It took the analysts' work into a quite new realm of enchantment. In one of the main uses, the human and the machine would work together:
它把分析員的工作帶入了一種全新的境界：analyst would sit at the typewriter output and call out instructions for a Wren to make changes in the programs.
……分析員坐在打字機前，對程序做一些調整。Some of the other uses were eventually reduced to decision trees and were handed over to the machine operators.
其他的工作最終都會簡化成決策樹，由機器自動來完成。These 'decision trees' were like the 'trees' of the mechanical chess-playing schemes.
這裏所謂的決策樹，就像機械化國際象棋中的樹狀圖。It meant that some of the work of the intelligent analyst had been replaced by the electronic hardware of the Colossi; some went into the devising of instructions for them; some into the 'decision trees' that could be left to uncomprehending 'slaves'; and some retained for the human mind.
這意味着聰明的分析員們的某些工作，被電子的巨人機接手了。於是，他們有的轉去爲巨人機設計指令，有的轉去處理一些難以理解的決策樹。When off duty, they had talked about the machines playing chess, taking intelligent decisions automatically.
在不值班的時候，他們就聊聊自動玩國際象棋的聰明機器。In their work, in this new extraordinary phase, the arbitrary dispensations of the German cryptographic system had brought something like this into being—and even more uncanny for those who did it, a sense of dialogue with the machine.
他們的研究邁入了一個特殊的新階段，德國密碼界的盲目和混亂，導致了這樣的結局。更讓這些人覺得神奇的是，他們與機器之間，常常會產生一種對話的感覺。The line between the 'mechanical' and the 'intelligent' was very, very slightly blurred.
"數學的"和"智能的"之間的界限，現在變得非常非常模糊。Whatever its application to the great surprise that awaited the Germans, they were having a wonderful time in seeing the history of the future.
不管它給德國帶來了什麼，反正他們正在享受一段精彩的時光，正在見證未來的歷史。
