双语 ● Bill Gates in His Boyhood 比尔·盖茨的童年时代
Bill Gates in His Boyhood 比尔·盖茨的童年时代
◎ Sarah Kay
As a child—and as an adult as well—Bill was untidy. It has been said that in order to counteract this, Mary drew up weekly clothing plans for him. On Mondays he might go to school in blue, on Tuesdays in green, on Wednesdays in brown, on Thursdays in black, and so on, Weekend meal schedules might also be planned in detail. Everything time, at work or during his leisure time.
小的时候——即便长大了——比尔也是不修边幅的。据说为了改掉这个习惯，玛丽为他制定了一周穿衣计划。周一上学，他会穿蓝色的衣服，周二绿色，周三褐色，周四黑色，等等。周末的用餐表也会制定得十分详尽。每件事情都要井井有条，不论工作或是闲暇的时候。
Dinner table discussions in the Gate’s family home were always lively and educational. “It was a rich environment in which to learn,” Bill remembered.
盖茨家餐桌上的讨论总是既活泼生动又富有教育意义。比尔回忆说：“那是一个内容丰富的学习环境。”
Bill’s contemporaries, even at the age, recognized that he was exceptional. Every year, he and his friends would go to summer camp. Bill especially liked swimming and other sports. One of his summer camp friends recalled, “He was never a nerd or a goof or the kind of kid you didn’t want your team. We all knew Bill was smarter than us. Even back then, when he was nine or ten years old, he talked like an adult and could express himself in ways that none of us understood.”
比尔的同龄人，即使在那个年龄，也能看出他的与众不同。每一年，他和他的朋友们都会参加夏令营。比尔特别喜欢游泳和其他一些体育运动。他的一个在夏令营的朋友回忆道：“他绝对不是一个无足轻重或者让你不愿与之为伍的孩子。我们都知道比尔比我们聪明。甚至更早的时候，当他九、十岁的时候，他说话的口气就像个小大人，并且用一些深奥难懂的方式表达自己的想法。”
Bill was also well ahead of his classmates in mathematics and science. He needed to go to a school that challenged him to Lakeside—an all-boys’ school for exceptional students. It was Seattle’s most exclusive school and was noted for its rigorous academic demands, a place where “even the dumb kids were smart”.
在数学和自然方面，比尔的表现与全班同学相比更是略胜一筹。他需要上一所像湖畔中学——一所专门招收天才男孩的学校——那样充满挑战的学校。这是西雅图最高级的学校了，它以严厉的课程要求而闻名，是一个“连哑巴都很聪明”的地方。
Lakeside allowed students to pursue their own interests, to whatever extent they wished. The school prided itself on making conditions and facilities available that would enable all its students to reach their full potential. It was the ideal environment for someone like Bill Gates.
湖畔中学允许学生按照自己的兴趣自由发挥。学校最引以为傲的是他们所营造的环境和设施能最大限度地激发学生的潜能。对于像比尔·盖茨这样的学生来说，这是最理想的学习环境了。
In 1968, the school made a decision that would change thirteen-year-old Bill Cates’s life—and that of many of others, too.
1968年，校方做出的一个决定足以改变13岁的比尔·盖茨的生活，当然，这个决定也改变了不少其他人的生活。
Funds were raised, mainly by parents, that enabled the school to gain access to a computer—a Program Data Processor (PDP)—through a teletype machine. Type in a few instructions on the teletype machine and a few seconds later the PDP would type back its response. Bill Gates was immediately hooked—so was his best friend at the time, Kent Evans, and another student, Paul Allen, who was two years older than Bill.
学校主要依靠父母的集资，通过一种电传打字机接触到了电脑——也就是程序控制数据处理机。在电传打字机上输入几条指令，几秒钟之后，程序控制数据处理机就会立即反馈信息。比尔·盖茨马上就着迷了——当时他的好友坎特·埃文斯，还有另一个比他大两岁的学生保罗·艾伦也着迷了。
Whenever they had free time, and sometimes when they didn’t, they would dash over to the computer room to use the machine. The students became so single-minded that they soon overtook their teachers in knowledge about computing and got into a lot of trouble because of their obsession. They were neglecting their other studies— every piece of word was handed in late. Classes were cut. Computer time was also proving to be very expensive. Within months, the whole budget that had been set aside for the year had been used up.
不管有没有时间，他们都要飞奔到电脑室去用那台机器。学生们太专注了，很快就忘记了老师教授的那些电脑知识，还闯了不少祸。他们忽略了其他课程——每份作业都迟迟才交，甚至有时还旷课。上机课还很贵。所以几个月后，那些本来为一整年准备的预算就用光了。
At fourteen, Bill was already writing short programs for the computer to perform. Early games programs such as Tic-Tac-Toe, or Noughts and Crosses, and Lunar Landing were written in what was to become Bill’s second language, BASIC.
比尔14岁的时候就能编一些简短的电脑运行程序。还有早期的游戏程序“一字棋”或“圈叉游戏”和“登月”，都是用后来成为比尔的第二语言——BASIC——来编写的。
One of the reasons Bill was so good at programming is because it is mathematical and logical. During his time at Lakeside, Bill scored a perfect eight hundred on a mathematics test. It was extremely important to him to get this grade—he had to take the test more than once in order to do it.
比尔如此擅长编程的原因之一就是编程蕴含很强的运算性和逻辑性。在湖畔中学的那段时间里，比尔在一次数学测验中取得了满分800分。这次的满分对他来说意义非凡——为了取得满分，他不得不多次参加这个测验。
If Bill Gates was going to be good at something. It was essential to be the best.
如果比尔·盖茨想要做好某件事，他必定会做到最好。
Bill’s and Paul’s fascination with computers and the business world meant that they read a great deal. Paul enjoyed magazines like Popular Electronics. Computer time was expensive and, because both boys were desperate to get more time and because Bill already had an insight into what they could achieve financially, the two of them decided to set themselves up as a company: The Lakeside Programmers Group. “Let’s call the real world and try to sell something to it!” Bill announced.
比尔和保罗对电脑和商务的痴迷就意味着他们要博览群书。保罗喜欢像《大众电子》那类的杂志。上机时间很昂贵，而这两个孩子都需要更多的上机时间，再加上比尔预感到他们有可能赚到一大笔钱。于是，这两个孩子决定创办一个公司——湖畔程序设计者集团。从此，比尔宣布：“让我们唤醒这个世界，并向它推销点东西吧！”
