雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第2章:下一個星期(14)

In the summer holiday the Turings stayed again at a boarding house in Wales, this time at Ffestiniog. Alan and his mother strode up the peaks. Back at the boarding house was a Mr Neild who took great interest in Alan and gave him a book on mountain climbing in which he wrote a long inscription treating Alan's climbs as symbolic of his eventually attaining intellectual heights. One person, for a brief moment, had taken him seriously.

暑假時，圖靈一家又到威爾士度假，這次去的是費斯泰格。在一間木房子裏，尼爾德先生對艾倫很感興趣，並送給他一本關於爬山的書，他在書上寫了很長一段話，鼓勵艾倫像爬山一樣，攀登智力的頂峯。在這個時期，他是僅有的幾位認真看待艾倫的人之一。

The human body, Natural Wonders explained, was a 'Living Apothecary Shop'. It was Brewster's way of describing the effects of the recently discovered hormones, whereby the 'different parts of the body' could 'signal to one another' with 'chemical messages' rather than through the nervous system. It was during 1927, when he became fifteen, that Alan gained his height, and presumably the more interesting and exciting changes took place at the same time.

《自然奇蹟》裏說，人體是一個活藥店，布魯斯特用這個比喻，來描述最新發現的激素的作用。身體的各個部位，向其它部位傳達化學信號，這個過程是依靠激素，而不是神經。1927年，艾倫15歲了，他長高了，一些更刺激的改變，也在這個時候發生了。

It was also time for the puberty rite of the Church of England. Alan was confirmed on 7 November 1927. Like the Officers Training Corps, confirmation was one of those duties for which everyone had to volunteer. But he did believe in it, or at least in something, as he knelt before the bishop of Salisbury and renounced for himself the world, the flesh and the devil. Nowell Smith, however, took advantage of the occasion to remark:

1927年11月7日，艾倫參加了堅定禮，就像軍事訓練營一樣，每個人都有義務參加堅定禮。當艾倫跪在薩利伯瑞主教面前，發誓與肉慾和惡魔斷絕關係時，他確實是認真的，或者說他至少相信其中的一些東西。然而，諾威爾.史密斯校長卻這樣評論：