雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第2章:下一個星期(18)

It was Alec Waugh's accusation that Sherborne provided a training in – metaphorically speaking – using two halves of the brain independently. 'Thinking', or rather official thinking, went on in one hemisphere, and ordinary life in the other. It was not hypocrisy: it was that no one in his senses would confuse the two worlds. It worked very well, and only went wrong when something happened to bridge the gap. Then, as Waugh said with some feeling, the real crime was to be found out.

艾力克指責說，舍爾伯尼這個地方，爲口是心非提供了優良的訓練環境，使人能夠割裂地使用兩半頭腦。思考，或者說正式的思考，是在一個半腦中進行，而日常的生活，則用另外一個半腦。這並不是虛僞，沒有一個理智的人，會把這兩個世界顛倒。這樣的模式運轉得很好，只有在偶爾「搭錯筋」時纔會搞錯，而在這樣的時候，艾力克頗有感觸地說：「你就能夠看到，什麼叫真正的罪惡。」

In 1927 the school had changed somewhat in its unofficial conventions. When the boys read The Loom of Youth (as of course they did, because it was forbidden) they were rather surprised at the tolerance shown, or at least suggested, of sexual friendships. When the games teams met their counterparts from other public schools, they were amazed at the latitude allowed at the rival establishments. Sherborne boys were at this period asserting a more puritanical, less cynical orthodoxy than that of Alec Waugh's 1914. Nowell Smith was no longer appealing to the independent boys to stamp out what he called 'filth'. But he had not prevented the chemical messages from flowing in four hundred budding 'living apothecary shops', and not even the cold baths had put a stop to 'dirty talk'.

1927年，學校的私下傳統，稍微產生了一些改變。男孩們在讀《青春織機》時（他們一定會讀，因爲這是禁書），他們對書裏展示，至少是暗示的性關係感到相當驚奇。當他們外出參加比賽，遇到其它學校的男孩時，他們對其它學校的自由也感到很驚奇。今天的舍爾伯尼男孩們，受到的紀律束縛比艾力克所在的1914年更爲嚴厲，但學校終歸無法阻止化學信息在400個正在發育的「活藥店」中流動，也無法阻止盥洗室裏的髒話。

Alan Turing was a boy of independent character, but this subject presented him with a problem which was the opposite of the headmaster's. To most boys 'scandal' would be a quickly-forgotten bantering, alleviating the monotony of school. But to him, it touched the centre of life itself. For although he had surely learnt by now about the birds and the bees, his heart was to be elsewhere. The secret of how the babies were born was hidden well, but everyone knew there was a secret. He, however, had been made aware by Sherborne of a secret that in the outside world was not even supposed to exist. And it was his secret. For he was drawn by love and desire not only to 'the commonest in nature', but to his own sex.

艾倫的人格非常獨立，但是髒話這件事，從另一個角度上，成了他的大難題。對於多數男孩來說，髒話只是一種玩笑，用來緩解學校的無聊。但對於艾倫來說，這些髒話，似乎觸及了生命的本質。他已經知道了關於鳥類和蜜蜂的那些事，至於人類嬰兒，雖然還是個祕密，但每個人都知道，存在着這樣一個祕密。可是，艾倫還意識到了另一個祕密，一個其他人都不知道其存在的祕密，那就是他自己祕密。現在吸引他的，不只是「大自然最普適的道理」，還有他自己對性愛的慾望。