jean-错车道
J.K
罗琳
2008
年
哈佛大学毕业典礼演讲
——
《哈利<
/p>
.
波特》作者
J.K
罗琳
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 honor
, 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 bre
aths, 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。现在我要做的就是深呼吸几下，眯着眼
< br>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，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 Warn
ock
，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，
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，
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
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 romanticized 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
< br>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 knack 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.
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，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
since 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，
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。
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，将使你历经沧桑后
能够更好的生存。
You might think
that I chose my second theme, the importance of
imagination, because of the
part it
played in rebuilding my life, but that is not
wholly so. Though I will defend the value of
bedtime
stories
to
my
last
gasp,
I
have
learned
to
value
imagination
in
a
much
broader
sense.
Imagination is not
only the uniquely human capacity to envision that
which is not, and therefore
the
fount
of
all
invention
and
innovation.
In
its
arguably
most
transformative
and
revelatory
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