联觉又叫做通感，据科学家的统计全世界每2000人中只有一人（本文作者说是0.5%）。有的人是2种感官联系在一起，少数人是3种感官联系在一起的。2种感官联觉得有：字母-颜色联觉；符号-味觉联觉；声音-颜色联觉（听到声音看见五彩颜色的彩带飘在空中）；声音-味觉联觉等。（百度百科）

I was 30 and a mature student in art college when I first realised I saw the alphabet (字母表) in glorious technicolour. I was building a 3D calendar (three wooden cubes telling the day, date and month) when my tutor asked why I had painted the six blue. “Because that’s what six is,” I told her.

in full/glorious technicolour：（在屏幕上）色彩斑斓地清楚显示

I think of my grapheme-colour synesthesia as a curiosity (奇特性), rather than a condition (问题，病症). I see every letter and number in its own unique hue (色调) and, when they are combined into words, every word makes a colour that is equally unique to my mind. Experts say it is a blending of the senses; to do with the way signals in the brain are processed.

synaesthesia /,sinis'θi:ziə; -ʒiə; -ni:s-/n.【生理学、心理学】联觉，牵连感觉，共同感觉 

grapheme-colour synesthesia 字母-色彩联觉

我认为这种字母-色彩联觉是我的特质，而不是什么不正常的问题。

大夫说这是不同感官的混合，与大脑处理信号的方式有关。

But it is impossible to recognise that you have it until you realise others don’t; it was not until that odd moment in the art studio that I started to question whether a rainbow alphabet was the norm.

从那一刻起我才开始疑惑，能看到五颜六色的字母表到底正不正常。

After the conversation with my tutor, I started to talk to people about it, but they didn’t understand and I soon stopped because they clearly thought it was nonsense. Synesthesia of one sense or another is estimated to affect up to 0.5% of the population and can present itself through taste or hearing music, too.

各种感官的联觉，据说影响到0.5%的人群，除了色彩外，还有味觉、听觉等。

I can tell someone the colour of their name instantly. Processing words is like mixing paints on a palette (调色板): C is white, D is beige ([beɪʒ; beɪdʒ]米黄色), E is yellow and so on. They have never changed or reconfigured (重新组合).

形成一个单词的颜色就仿佛是在调色板上调色。

It was my youngest daughter, Jenny, who was most intrigued (着迷的) by it. She found it magical as a child. As an adult, I remember buying her narcissus (水仙) flowers because they were the same yellow as her name.

My other daughter, Katie, is a metallic (金属的) blue-black and my son Mike’s shade (色彩的明暗度) is just a bit lighter – they both have a K, an I and an E. My husband, Bob, is brick red (砖红色).

When Jenny told me the names of my granddaughters, each time it was their colours I saw first: Lila is white; Ava ([ɑ:və]), her little sister, is green. 

The associations are involuntary (无意识的) but, in many ways, they are rather like having particularly pleasant muzak (背景音乐) on in the background – the colours are always there. As a furniture designer, it did not have a tremendous bearing on my trade. But in daily life, words sing out (大声喊出) to me everywhere I go. Advertising hoardings (广告牌), road signs and posters are all brighter and louder to me. 

我是个家具设计师，所以工作中不会有大量的文字信息需要处理。

I read the papers every day and about four novels a month, so it certainly hasn’t distracted from my enjoyment of the written word. If anything, it enhances it. The Guardian, incidentally, is a mixture of pinky-beige and green.

Synesthesia is not a definite science. I remember reading someone else’s story in a book, thinking their colours were different from mine. Each synesthete (有联觉者) experiences their own personal colour spectrum (色谱).

I can’t imagine what it must feel like not to have it, except that it must be rather boring. In some ways I wish I’d known earlier, but I was brought up in the 1950s when parents were inside the house and children played at the bottom of the garden, so no one sat down with me and asked why I’d chosen the colours I had when I did a painting.

There is nothing dull (阴暗的) or grey in my spectrum. I like the colours that I have created, but that blue number six is still my favourite. That one has always made me smile.

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