罗琳2008年哈佛大学毕业演讲(中英对照)

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance ofImagination

Harvard University Commencement Address

J.K. Rowling

Tercentenary Theatre, June 5, 2008

失败的好处和想象力的重要性

哈佛大学毕业典礼

J.K.

罗琳

2008

年

6

月

5

日

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

ordinaryhonour

, but the weeks of fear and nausea

I’ve

endured at the thought of giving t

hiscommencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I ha

ve to do istake deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at

the

world’s

largestGryffindors' 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，眯着眼睛看

看前面的大红横幅，安慰自己正在世界上最大的魔法学院聚会上。

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast

my mindback to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the disti

nguished Britishphilosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helpe

d me enormously inwriting this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single

word she said. This liberatingdiscovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I mi

ght inadvertently influence you toabandon promising careers in business, law or politics f

or the giddy delights of becoming a gaywizard.

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 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

法律或政治上的大好前途，< /p>

转而醉心于成为一

个快乐的魔法师。

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out

ahead ofBaroness 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

BaronessMary 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

askedmyself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons

I have learnedin 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

tocelebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of f

ailure. And asyou stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to

extol the crucialimportance 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；

< br>在你们即将迈向

―

现实生活

‖< /p>

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 expe

rience forthe 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an un

easy balancebetween the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expect

ed 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

,

myparents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom ha

d been tocollege, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal

quirk that couldnever 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 Literatu

re. Acompromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study

ModernLanguages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the roa

d than I ditchedGerman 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 outfor the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think th

ey would have beenhard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it cam

e to securing the keys to anexecutive 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，< /p>

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 poin

t of is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong d

irection; themoment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. W

hat is more, I cannotcriticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience povert

y. They had been poorthemselves, and I have since been poor

, and I quite agree with the

m that it is not an ennoblingexperience. Poverty entails fear

, and stress, and sometimes d

epression; it means a thousand pettyhumiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty

by your own efforts, that is indeed somethingon which to pride yourself, but poverty itsel

f 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，< /p>

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 to

o long inthe coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for

passingexaminations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life an

d that of mypeers.

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 havenever known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculate

d anyone againstthe caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that every

one here has enjoyed anexistence 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 w

ell-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a de

sire forsuccess. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average

person's idea ofsuccess, 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，< /p>

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 q

uite eagerto give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conv

entional measure, amere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic sc

ale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent

, and as poor as it is possible to be inmodern Britain, without being homeless. The fears

my parents had had for me, and that I had hadfor myself, had both come to pass, and b

y 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。所以我承认命运 的公平，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 darkone, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since re

presented as a kindof fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, an

d for a long time, any light atthe 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 a

way of theinessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than wha

t I was, and beganto direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to m

e. Had I really succeeded atanything else, I might never have found the determination to

succeed in the one arena I believed Itruly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest

fear had already been realised, and I was stillalive, and I still had a daughter whom I ad

ored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And sorock bottom became the solid fo

undation 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、