英国数学天才女十岁上大学

At first glance Esther Okade seems like a normal 10-year-old. She loves dressing up as Elsa from "Frozen," playing with Barbie dolls and going to the park or shopping.
第一眼看上去，十岁的埃丝特·奥卡德好像和同龄孩子没什么不一样。她喜欢打扮成《冰雪奇缘》里的艾尔莎，喜欢芭比娃娃，也喜欢去公园和商场。

But what makes the British-Nigerian youngster stand out is the fact that she's also a university undergraduate.
但与众不同的是，这个尼日利亚裔英国小女孩其实已是一名大学本科生了。

Esther, from Walsall, an industrial town in the UK's West Midlands region, is one of the country's youngest college freshmen.
埃丝特，来自英国西米德兰兹郡的工业城市沃尔索尔，已经成为了英国年龄最小的大学生之一。

The talented 10-year-old enrolled at the Open University, a UK-based distance learning college, in January and is already top of the class, having recently scored 100% in a recent exam.
今年1月份，这位10岁的天才少女进入了英国的一所远程教育大学——开放大学。她现在已经在班里名列前茅，最近一次考试得了满分。

"It's so interesting. It has the type of maths I love. It's real maths -- theories, complex numbers, all that type of stuff," she giggles. "It was super easy. My mum taught me in a nice way."
“大学很有趣。这里有我喜欢的那种数学，那种真正的数学——理论、复杂的数字，诸如此类，”她咯咯地笑着说，“这非常简单，都是我妈妈之前教得好。”

She adds: "I want to (finish the course) in two years. Then I'm going to do my PhD in financial maths when I'm 13. I want to have my own bank by the time I'm 15 because I like numbers and I like people and banking is a great way to help people."
她还说：“我想在两年内读完本科课程，然后13岁时去读金融数学的博士。我希望，到15岁的时候拥有自己的银行，因为我喜欢数字，也喜欢人们，而银行可以很好地帮助人们。”

And in case people think her parents have pushed her into starting university early, Esther emphatically disagrees.
或许有人认为埃丝特是在父母的压力下才早早进入大学，她断然否认这一说法。

"I actually wanted to start when I was seven. But my mum was like, "you're too young, calm down." After three years of begging, mother Efe finally agreed to explore the idea.
“其实我7岁开始就想要上大学了，但是我妈妈说，‘你还太小，别急’，我恳求了三年，妈妈埃菲才终于同意。”

Esther has always jumped ahead of her peers. She sat her first Math GSCE exam, a British high school qualification, at Ounsdale School in Wolverhampton at just six, where she received a C-grade. A year later, she outdid herself and got the A-grade she wanted. Then last year she scored a B-grade when she sat the Math A-level exam.
埃丝特一直都比同龄人学得快。她6岁就在伍尔弗汉普顿的Ounsdale学校第一次参加英国中学普通中等教育（GSCE）数学考试，得了C。一年后，她再次参加考试，拿到了她想要的A。去年，她在中学高级水平（A-level）数学考试中拿到了B。

Esther's mother noticed her daughter's flair for figures shortly after she began homeschooling her at the age of three. Initially, Esther's parents had enrolled her in a private school but after a few short weeks, the pair began noticing changes in the usually-vibrant youngster.
埃丝特3岁时，她的妈妈开始在家教她，很快就察觉了女儿在数字方面上的天赋。最初，埃丝特的父母让女儿上了一所私立学校，但短短几周后，他们就开始注意到，活跃的女儿有了变化。

Efe says: "One day we were coming back home and she burst out in tears and she said 'I don't ever want to go back to that school -- they don't even let me talk!'
埃菲说：“一天我们回家的路上，她突然大哭，说‘我不想去那里上学了——他们都不让我说话！’”

"In theUK, you don't have to start school until you are five. Education is not compulsory until that age so I thought OK, we'll be doing little things at home until then. Maybe by the time she's five she will change her mind."
“在英国，五岁之前可以不去上学。在五岁之前，教育并不是强制性的。所以我想她可以先在家学点东西，等她到五岁时，她可能就会改变想法了。”

Efe started by teaching basic number skills but Esther was miles ahead. By four, her natural aptitude for maths had seen the eager student move on to algebra and quadratic equations.
埃菲一开始教女儿一些基本的算术，但埃丝特的能力大大地超前了。这位求知欲旺盛的学生，4岁时已经学习代数和二次方程了，她的数学天赋崭露无疑。

And Esther isn't the only maths prodigy in the family. Her younger brother Isaiah, 6, will soon be sitting his first A-level exam in June.
埃丝特并不是家里唯一的一个数学天才，她的弟弟艾赛亚，年仅6岁，即将在6月份参加中学高级水平考试。

（译者：陈敏慧 编辑：Helen）