occupied-缅甸币
J·K·罗琳在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲
(
双
语
)
她
的演讲题目是《失败的好处和想象的重要性》
(
The
Fringe
Benefits
of
Failure,
and
the Importance of
Imagination
)
。
President
Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the
Board of Overseers,
members of the
faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,
福斯特主席,哈佛公司和监察委员会的各位成员,
各位老师、家长、全体毕业生们:
The
first
thing
I
would
like
to
say
is
you.
Not
only
has
Harvard
given
me
an
extraordinary
honour, but
the
weeks
of
fear
and nausea
I
’
ve
endured
at
the
thought
of
giving
this commencement address have made me lose
weight. A win-win situation! Now
all I
have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red
banners and convince myself that I
am
at the world
’
s largest
Gryffindors' reunion.
首先请允许我说一声谢谢。
哈佛不仅给了我无上的荣誉,
连日来为这个演讲经受的恐惧和紧
张,
更令我减肥成功。
这真是一个双赢的局面。<
/p>
现在我要做的就是深呼吸几下,
眯着眼睛看
看前面的大红横幅,
安慰自己正在世界上最大的格兰芬多
(沪
江小编:
以防有人没看过
《哈
利波特》
……
格兰芬多是小哈利所在的魔法学院的名字)聚会上。
Delivering a
commencement address is a great responsibility; or
so I thought until I cast
my
mind
back
to
my
own
graduation.
The
commencement
speaker
that
day
was
the
distinguished British
philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on
her speech has
helped
me
enormously
in
writing
this one,
because
it
turns
out
that
I
can't
remember
a
single
word
she
said. This
liberating
discovery enables
me
to
proceed
without
any
fear
that I might inadvertently influence
you to abandon promising careers in business, law
or
politics for the giddy delights of
becoming a gay wizard.
发表毕业演说是一个巨大的责任,<
/p>
至少在我回忆自己当年的毕业典礼前是这么认为的。
那天
做演讲的是英国著名的哲学家
Baroness Mary Warnock
,对她演讲的回
忆,对我写今天的
演讲稿,
产生了极大的帮助,
因为我不记得她说过的任何一句话了。
这个发现让我释然,
让
我不再担心我可能会无意中影响你放弃在商业,
法律或政
治上的大好前途,
转而醉心于成为
一个快乐的魔法师(
gay
有快乐和同性恋的意思)
。
You see? If all you
remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard'
joke, I've still come out
ahead of
Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals - the
first step to self-improvement.
你们看,如果在
若干年后你们还记得
―
快乐的魔法师
‖
这个笑话,那就证明我已经超越了
Baroness Mary
Warnock
。建立可实现的目标
——
这是提高自我的第一步。
Actually, I have wracked my mind and
heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have
asked myself what I wish I had known at
my own graduation, and what important lessons I
have learned in the 21 years that has
expired between that day and this.
实际上,
我为今天应该和大家谈些什么绞尽了脑汁。
我问自己什么是我希
望早在毕业典礼上
就该了解的,而从那时起到现在的
21
年间,我又得到了什么重要的启示。
I have come up with two
answers. On this wonderful day when we are
gathered together
to celebrate your
academic success, I have decided to talk to you
about the benefits of
failure. And as
you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes
called 'real life', I want to
extol the
crucial importance of imagination.
我想到了
两个答案。
在这美好的一天,
当我们一起庆祝你们取得学业成就
的时刻,
我希望告
诉你们失败有什么样的益处;
在你们即将迈向
―
现实生活
‖
的道路之际,
我还要褒扬想象力的
重要
性。
These may
seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but bear
with me.
这些似乎是不切实际或自相矛盾的选择,但请先容我讲完。
Looking
back
at
the
21-year-
old
that
I
was
at
graduation,
is
a
slightly
uncomfortable
experience for
the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my
lifetime ago, I was striking an
uneasy
balance
between
the
ambition
I
had
for
myself,
and
what
those
closest
to
me
expected of me.
回顾
21
岁刚刚毕业时的自己,对于今天
42
岁的我来说,是一个稍微不太舒服的经历。可以
说,我人生的前一部分,一直挣扎在
自己的雄心和身边的人对我的期望之间。
I was convinced that the only thing I
wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However,
my
parents, both of whom came from
impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had
been to college, took the view that my
overactive imagination was an amusing personal
quirk that could never pay a mortgage,
or secure a pension.
我一直深信,
自
己唯一想做的事情,
就是写小说。
不过,
我的父母,
他们都来自贫穷的背景,
没有任何一人上过大学,
坚持认为我过度的想象力是一个令人惊讶的个人怪癖,
根本不足
以
让我支付按揭,或者取得足够的养老金。
I know the irony strikes
like with the force of a cartoon anvil
now
, but
…
我现在明白反讽就像用卡通铁砧去打击你,但
...
They had hoped that I would
take a vocational degree; I wanted to study
English Literature.
A
compromise
was
reached
that
in
retrospect
satisfied nobody
,
and
I
went
up
to
study
Modern Languages. Hardly had my
parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the
road
than I ditched German and scuttled
off down the Classics corridor.
他们希望我去拿
个职业学位,
而我想去攻读英国文学。
最后,
< br>达成了一个双方都不甚满意的
妥协:我改学现代语言。可是等到父母一走开,我立
刻放弃了德语而报名学习古典文学。
I cannot remember telling my parents
that I was studying Classics; they might well have
found out for the first time on
graduation day. Of all the subjects on this
planet, I think they
would have been
hard put to name one less useful than Greek
mythology when it came to
securing the
keys to an executive bathroom.
我不记得将这事告
诉了父母,
他们可能是在我毕业典礼那一天才发现的。
我想,<
/p>
在全世界的
所有专业中,
他们也许认为,
不会有比研究希腊神话更没用的专业了,
根本无法换来一间独<
/p>
立宽敞的卫生间。
I would like to make it clear, in
parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for
their point of
view
.
There
is
an
expiry
date
on
blaming
your
parents
for
steering
you
in
the
wrong
direction; the moment you are old
enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with
you.
What
is
more,
I
cannot
criticise
my
parents
for
hoping
that
I
would
never
experience
poverty. They had
been poor themselves, and I have since been poor,
and I quite agree
with
them
that
it
is
not
an
ennobling
experience.
Poverty
entails
fear, and
stress,
and
sometimes depression; it means a
thousand petty humiliations and hardships.
Climbing
out of poverty by your own
efforts, that is indeed something on which to
pride yourself, but
poverty itself is
romanticised only by fools.
我想澄清一下:
我不会因为父母的观点,
而责怪他们。
埋怨父母
给你指错方向是有一个时间
段的。
当你成长到可以控制自我方向
的时候,
你就要自己承担责任了。
尤其是,
我不会因为
父母希望我不要过穷日子,
而责怪他们。
他们一直很贫穷,
我后来也一度很穷,
所以我
很理
解他们。贫穷并不是一种高贵的经历,它带来恐惧、压力、有时还有绝望,它意味着
许许多
多的羞辱和艰辛。
靠自己的努力摆脱贫穷,
确实可以引以自豪,
但贫穷本身只有对傻瓜而言
才是
浪漫的。
What I
feared most for myself at your age was not
poverty, but failure.
我在你们这个年龄,最害怕的不是贫穷,而是失败。
At your age, in spite of a
distinct lack of motivation at university, where I
had spent far too
long in the coffee
bar writing stories, and far too little time at
lectures, I had a k
nack for
passing examinations, and that, for
years, had been the measure of success in my life
and
that of my peers.
我在您们这么
大时,
明显缺乏在大学学习的动力,
我花了太久时间在咖啡吧写
故事,
而在课
堂的时间却很少。
我有一
个通过考试的诀窍,
并且数年间一直让我在大学生活和同龄人中不
落人后。
I am not
dull enough to suppose that because you are
young, gifted and well-educated,
you have never known hardship or
heartache. Talent and intelligence never yet
inoculated
anyone against the caprice
of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose
that everyone
here has enjoyed an
existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
我不想愚蠢地假设,
因为你们年轻、
有
天份,
并且受过良好的教育,
就从来没有遇到困难或
心碎的时刻。
拥有才华和智慧,
从来不会使人对命
运的反复无常有所准备;
我也不会假设大
家坐在这里冷静地满足
于自身的优越感。
However, the fact that you are
graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not
very
well-acquainted with failure. You
might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much
as a
desire
for
success.
Indeed,
your
conception
of
failure
might
not
be
too
far
from
the
average person's idea of success, so
high have you already flown academically.
< br>相反,
你们是哈佛毕业生的这个事实,
意味着你们并不很
了解失败。
你们也许极其渴望成功,
所以非常害怕失败。
说实话,
你们眼中的失败,
很可能就是普通人
眼中的成功,
毕竟你们在
学业上已经达到很高的高度了。
Ultimately,
we
all
have
to
decide for
ourselves
what
constitutes
failure,
but
the
world
is
quite
eager
to
give
you a
set
of
criteria
if
you
let
it.
So
I
think
it
fair
to
say
that
by
any
conventional
measure,
a
mere
seven
years
after
my
graduation day,
I
had failed
on
an
epic scale. An exceptionally short-
lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a
lone
parent, and as poor as it is
possible to be in modern Britain, without being
homeless. The
fears my parents had had
for me, and that I had had for myself, had both
come to pass,
and by every usual
standard, I was the biggest failure I
knew
.
最终,
我们所有人都必须
自己决定什么算作失败,
但如果你愿意,
世界是相当渴望给你一
套
标准的。
所以我想很公平的讲,
从任
何传统的标准看,
在我毕业仅仅七年后的日子里,
我的
失败达到了史诗般空前的规模:
短命的婚姻闪电般地破裂,
我又失业成了一个艰难的单身母
亲。
除了流浪汉,<
/p>
我是当代英国最穷的人之一,
真的一无所有。
当年父母和我自己对未来的
担忧,现在都变成了现实。按照惯常的标准来看,我也是
我所知道的最失败的人。
Now
, I am not going to stand
here and tell you that failure is fun. That period
of my life was
a
dark
one,
and
I
had
no
idea
that
there
was
going
to
be
what
the
press
has
sin
ce
represented as a kind of fairy tale
resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel
extended,
and for a long time, any
light at the end of it was a hope rather than a
reality.
现在,
我不打算站在这里告诉你们,
失败是有趣的。
那段日子是我生命中的黑暗岁月,
我不
知道它是否代表童话故事里需要历经的磨难,
更不知道
自己还要在黑暗中走多久。
很长一段
时间里,前面留给我的只是
希望,而不是现实。
So why
do
I talk about the benefits of
failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping
away of the inessential. I stopped
pretending to myself that I was anything other
than what
I was, and began to direct
all my energy into finishing the only work that
mattered to me.
Had
I really
succeeded at anything else, I might never have
found the determination to
succeed in
the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was
set free, because my greatest
fear had
been realised, and I was still alive, and I still
had a daughter whom I adored, and I
had
an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock
bottom became the solid foundation on
which I rebuilt my life.
那么为
什么我要谈论失败的好处呢?因为失败意味着剥离掉那些不必要的东西。
我因此不再
p>
伪装自己、
远离自我,
而重新开始把所有精
力放在对我最重要的事情上。
如果不是没有在其
他领域成功过,
我可能就不会找到,
在一个我确信真正属于的舞台上取得成功的
决心。
我获
得了自由,
因为最害怕的虽
然已经发生了,
但我还活着,
我仍然有一个我深爱的女儿,
p>
我还
有一个旧打字机和一个很大的想法。所以困境的谷底,成为我重
建生活的坚实基础。
You
might never fail on the scale I did, but some
failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible
to live without failing at something,
unless you live so cautiously that you might as
well not
have lived at all
–
in which case, you fail by
default.
你们可能永远没有达到我经历的那种失败程度,
但有些失败,
在生活中是不可避免的。
生活
不可能没有一点失败,
除非你生活的万般小心,
而那也
意味着你没有真正在生活了。
无论怎
样,有些失败还是注定地要
发生。
Failure
gave
me
an
inner
security
that
I
had
never
attained
by
passing
examinations.
Failure taught me things about myself
that I could have learned no other way. I
discovered
that I had a strong will,
and more discipline than I had suspected; I also
found out that I
had friends whose
value was truly above the price of rubies.
失败使我的内心产生一种安全感,
这是我从考试中没有得到过的。
失败让我看清自己,
这也
是我通过其他方式无法体会
的。
我发现,
我比自己认为的,
要有更
强的意志和决心。
我还发
现,我拥有比宝石更加珍贵的朋友。<
/p>
The knowledge
that you have emerged wiser and stronger from
setbacks means that you
are, ever
after, secure in your ability to survive. You
will never truly know yourself, or the
strength of your relationships, until
both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge
is
a
true
gift,
for
all
that
it
is
painfully
won,
and
it
has
been
worth
more
to
me
than
any
qualification I ever earned.
从挫折中获得智慧、
变得坚强,
意味着你比以往任何时候都更
有能力生存。
只有在逆境来临
的时候,
你才会真正认识你自己,
了解身边的人。
这种了解是真正的财富
,
虽然是用痛苦换
来的,但比我以前得到的任何资格证书都有用
。
So given a
Time Turner, I
would tell
my
21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in
knowing that life is not a check-list
of acquisition or achievement. Your
qualifications, your
CV, are not your
life, though you will meet many people of my age
and older who confuse
the
two.
Life
is
difficult,
and
complicated,
and
beyond
anyone's
total
control,
and
the
humility
to know that will enable you to survive its
vicissitudes.
如果给我一部时间机器,我会告诉
21
岁的自己,人的幸福在于知道生活不是一份漂亮的成
绩单
,
你的资历、
简历,
都不是你的生活,
虽然你会碰到很多与我同龄或更老一点的人今天
依然还在混淆两
者。
生活是艰辛的,
复杂的,
超出任何
人的控制能力,
而谦恭地了解这一点,