By Paul Millard 保羅.米勒德著

Secret codes are not a new idea. They are almost as old as writing itself. We know that the Ancient Egyptians and Greeks used them, as did the Arabs of a thousand years ago. They were especially important in war. Commanders didn’t want the enemy to capture their messages and understand their plans, so they wrote them in code. Of course, the enemy did want to understand the messages, so they would try to find the code, or ‘break’ it.

密碼并不是一個新的想法。密碼幾乎是跟書寫本身一樣的老東西了。我們知道，古埃及和古希臘人早就會使用密碼了，一千多年前的阿拉伯人也會使用密碼。密碼在戰(zhàn)爭的時候特別重要。指揮官并不希望敵人捕捉到他們的信息從而了解到他們的計劃，所以他們用密碼寫信息。當(dāng)然，敵人肯定是想要試圖了解信息，所以他們會試圖找到密碼，或者“破譯”密碼。

The Enigma code
As a result, codes became more and more complicated. One of the most famous is the Enigma code, invented by the Germans and used in the Second World War. People believed that it was impossible to break, because it was so clever. The amazing thing about Enigma was that it was always changing. In one message, the letter ‘e’ could be ‘f’, but in another message it could be ‘z’. So, there were millions of possibilities in every coded message.

Enigma密碼
因此，密碼變得原來越復(fù)雜。最著名的就是德國人在二戰(zhàn)中發(fā)明使用的Enigma密碼。人們相信那是無法破譯的，因為Enigma密碼非常聰明。Enigma最了不起的就是它總在改變。在一個信息里，字母“e”可能是“f”，但在另一個信息里可能就是“z”了。所以每一個加密的信息，都有成千上萬種可能。

The first people to attempt to break the code were the Polish, who were concerned about Hitler’s rise to power. A group of mathematicians worked on the Enigma problem. They found out a lot about how it worked, but they couldn’t understand it. When Hitler attacked in 1939, the Poles told the British everything that they knew about the code.
第一個嘗試破解Enigma的人是關(guān)注希特勒當(dāng)權(quán)的波蘭人。一群數(shù)學(xué)家研究Enigma問題。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了Enigma如何運(yùn)作，但是他們并不理解。1939年，當(dāng)希特勒發(fā)動襲擊，波蘭人將他們對密碼所知的一切都告訴了英國人。

Atlantic danger
Most of the British code-breakers thought that Enigma was unbreakable. They were especially concerned about the Enigma variations used by the German navy. The submarines sent by Hitler to attack ships in the Atlantic were probably the greatest danger faced by the British and American allies in the war. Britain needed food and other essentials from outside, and the Americans needed to send soldiers and supplies safely across the ocean. Without breaking the code, there was little chance of defeating the submarines. Without control of the Atlantic, there was little chance of victory.

大西洋威脅
大多數(shù)英國的密碼破譯者認(rèn)為Enigma是無法破譯的。他們特別關(guān)心德國海軍所使用的Enigma的變化。希特勒派去攻擊大西洋船只的潛艇，可能就是英美同盟戰(zhàn)中所面臨的最大的威脅。英國需要從外界獲得食物和生活必需品，而美國需要把士兵和日用品安全地越過大西洋送到戰(zhàn)地。不破譯密碼，那幾乎是沒有機(jī)會擊潰潛艇的。如果未能控制大西洋，那幾乎是沒有可能取得勝利的。

Alan Turing, code-breaker
Almost alone, one man began to work on the problem. He was a brilliant young mathematician called Alan Turing. He believed that he could break the code with advanced logic and statistics. However, he needed to make a machine that could do a very large number of calculations very quickly. By improving on the machines that the Poles had made, he built a machine called the ‘Bombe’.

阿蘭 圖靈，密碼破譯者
有一個人，幾乎是他單獨(dú)一個人，開始了對Enigma這個問題的研究。他是一個名叫阿蘭.圖靈的杰出的年輕數(shù)學(xué)家。他相信，他能夠用先進(jìn)的邏輯學(xué)和統(tǒng)計學(xué)破譯密碼。然而，他需要制造一臺能快速計算大量數(shù)字的機(jī)器。通過對波蘭人所造機(jī)器的改良，阿蘭圖靈制造了一臺叫“圖靈機(jī)”。

It worked. He broke the Enigma code. The British and Americans could read the messages that were sent to and from Hitler’s submarines. Slowly, the allies won the Battle of the Atlantic. They had freedom to move at sea and could send their armies to liberate Western Europe from Hitler and the Nazis. In 1943, they went to Italy and in 1944 they successfully landed in France. This was the landing shown in the film, ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Without Turing and his code-breaking, the history of Europe and the world could have been very different.

“圖靈機(jī)”真的產(chǎn)生了效果。阿蘭.圖靈破譯了Enigma密碼。英國人和美國人能夠讀懂希特勒潛艇收發(fā)的信息。慢慢的，盟軍贏得了大西洋戰(zhàn)爭。他們能夠在海上自由移動，并能夠把他們的軍隊派去西歐，從希特勒和納粹黨那里解放西歐。1943年，他們?nèi)チ艘獯罄?944年，他們在法國成功登陸。這就是電影《拯救大兵瑞恩》中出現(xiàn)的登陸畫面。沒有圖靈和他的密碼破譯，歐洲的歷史和這個世界將會很不一樣。

From code-breaking to computer-building
Turing continued working with machines and electronics and in 1944 he talked about ‘building a brain’. Turing had an idea for an electronic ‘universal machine’ that could do any logical task. Soon after the war, he went to work at Manchester University and in 1948 the ‘Manchester Baby’ was born. It was Turing’s second great invention and the world’s first digital computer. When he sent a message from his computer to a telex machine, Alan Turing wrote the first e-mail in history.

從密碼破譯到電腦的構(gòu)造
圖靈繼續(xù)研究機(jī)器和電子，1944年，他談及到“構(gòu)建一個大腦”。 圖靈有一個想法，是關(guān)于能做任何邏輯工作的電子“通用機(jī)器”。二戰(zhàn)不久后，他去了曼徹斯特大學(xué)工作，1948年“曼徹斯特寶貝”誕生了。這是圖靈的第二個偉大的發(fā)明，也是世界上第一個數(shù)碼電腦。當(dāng)他用他的電腦成功把一個信息發(fā)到一臺電報機(jī)時候，阿蘭圖靈寫了歷史上的第一份電子郵件。

So, what happened next in the life of this highly talented man? His great achievements in code-breaking and computing happened in his twenties and thirties. He was still a young man - in the same year that his computer worked for the first time, he nearly ran in the Olympic Games for Britain. We know that he had many ideas to develop in digital computing, quantum physics, biology and philosophy. Sadly, he wasn’t able to work fully on these ideas. Turing’s personal life became more and more problematic.
那么，這個有高度天賦的人在接下來的生活里發(fā)生了什么事？他在二三十歲的時候，取得了密碼破譯和計算機(jī)上的偉大成就。他仍是一個年輕人——在他的電腦開始工作的同一年，他差點(diǎn)跑進(jìn)了英國的奧林匹克運(yùn)動會。我們知道，他有許多想法來發(fā)展數(shù)碼電腦，量子物理，生物和哲學(xué)。不幸的是，他未能在這些想法上進(jìn)行研究。圖靈的私人生活變得越來越有問題了。

A genius under attack
Alan Turing was a homosexual. Nowadays, this is legal and widely accepted in Britain and most other Western countries. Fifty years ago, it was a very different story, and people were sent to prison for homosexual acts. Turing had to stop doing code-breaking work for the British government because his homosexuality was a ‘security risk’. This hurt and angered him, especially as it hadn’t been a problem in the war years. Increasingly, Turing refused to hide his homosexuality, believing that there was nothing wrong with him. Perhaps he felt that he deserved individual freedom, having done so much for freedom in the world.

被攻擊的天才
阿蘭圖靈是一個同性戀?，F(xiàn)在，在英國和大多數(shù)的其他西方國家，同性戀是合法并且被廣泛接受的。50年前，同性戀卻是一個很不一樣的事，人們會因為有同性戀行為而被送入監(jiān)獄。圖靈不得不停止為英國政府做密碼破譯工作，因為作為同性戀，他是一個“危險分子”。 這傷害并激怒了他，特別是因為在戰(zhàn)時，同性戀并不是一個問題。漸漸地，圖靈拒絕隱藏他的同性戀，并相信他自己并沒有什么問題。也許他覺得為全球的自由付出了這么多，他自己也該獲得個人的自由了。

Finally, he was arrested by the police and in March 1952 he was found guilty at a criminal trial. He wasn’t sent to prison – instead he was injected with the female hormone, oestrogen, in an attempt to stop his homosexual behaviour.

最終，他被警察逮捕，并在1952年3月被刑事法庭判定有罪。不過，他并沒有被送進(jìn)監(jiān)獄，而是被注射了雌激素，來阻止他的同性戀行為。

A tragic end
Two years later, Alan Turing was dead. He killed himself by eating an apple containing the poison, cyanide. The apple - the symbol of the physics of Newton, of forbidden love, of knowledge itself - became the symbol of tragic death.

悲慘的結(jié)局
兩年后，阿蘭圖靈死了。他吃了一個含有氰化物毒素的蘋果而自殺。蘋果——牛頓物理學(xué)的標(biāo)志，禁戀的標(biāo)志，知識的標(biāo)志——成為了悲劇死亡的標(biāo)志。

For many years, Turing was a forgotten hero. Now, more than fifty years after his death, more and more people are learning of his work in war and in peace. The BBC made a television programme about him. Some years ago, a statue designed by Glyn Hughes was put up in a small park in Manchester. It is of Turing, sitting on a park bench, with an apple in his hand. The money for the statue mostly came from individual people who wanted to remember him. No money came from the British government or any major computer company, despite the great work that Turing had done for them.
很多年來，阿蘭圖靈是一個被遺忘的英雄。現(xiàn)在，在他死后的50多年后，越來越多的人聽說了他在戰(zhàn)爭年代及和平年代的故事。英國廣播電臺做了關(guān)于他的一個電視節(jié)目。幾年后，格林休設(shè)計的一座塑像在曼徹斯特的一座小公園里矗立起來。雕像是圖靈手握一個蘋果，坐在公園的石凳上。建造塑像的資金大多數(shù)來源于想要銘記阿蘭圖靈的個人。雖然，圖靈為英國政府和電腦做了大量的工作，但是英國政府或任何大型電腦公司并未給塑像的建造提供資金。

It is a wonderful memorial, but perhaps a greater memorial is that you are reading this now because of Turing’s computing work, and that I could write it in a democratic country in Western Europe.
這是一個很棒的紀(jì)念碑，但是，更偉大的紀(jì)念碑，也許正是有了圖靈在電腦上的研究工作，你才能在電腦上讀到這些故事，而且我也能在西歐的一個民主的國家里寫關(guān)于阿蘭圖靈破譯密碼的故事。