jk罗琳哈佛演讲

jk罗琳哈佛演讲 篇一:注释版-JK罗琳哈佛毕业典礼演讲 2008年JK罗琳哈佛毕业典礼演讲 President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates. The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea 恶心and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion团聚. Delivering a commencement 毕业典礼address演讲 is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast(投，掷) my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished(著名的、 卓越的) British (深思)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释放、解放 discovery enables me to proceed开始;进行 without any fear that I might inadvertently 不 注意地、无意中influence you to abandon promising(有望成功的; 前景很好的) careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy (眩晕的) delights of becoming a gay wizard. You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement. Actually, I have wracked(毁坏，破坏?绞尽脑汁) 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 have expired(期限)终止， 结束 between that day and this. 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 what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol(赞美，颂扬) the crucial importance of imagination. These may seem quixotic(唐吉诃德式的?不切实际的)or paradoxical 自相矛盾的choices, but please bear with [忍受;对 (某 人) 有耐心]me. 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[strike a balance: 找到 (某种平衡)] between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me. 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穷困的 backgrounds and neither amusing personal quirk 怪癖; 古怪的性格that would never pay a mortgage (抵押贷 款), or secure a pension退休金. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil铁砧, now. So they hoped that I would take a vocational职业教育的 degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise妥协、折 衷 回想、追忆 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 丢弃;逃学 疾走、快跑 off down the Classics corridor. 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 神话when it came to securing the(本文来自:Www.HnbOxu.coM 博 旭 范文 网:jk罗琳哈佛演讲) keys to an executive高中级管理 人员 bathroom. I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis括号?插入语, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry (期限、协定等的) 满期，终止date on blaming your parents for steering 掌舵，操纵 you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel方向盘, 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使高贵; 使崇高 experience. Poverty entails 引起、蕴含fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty 琐碎的 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. What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. At your age, in spite of a distinct明显的 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 measure of success in my life and that of my peers. I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted有天赋的;有才华的and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated给…注射预防针anyone against the caprice反复无常 of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of uuffled(平 整的;镇定的)privilege特权and contentment. 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. 最终;最重要地, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes(构成) failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria (判断的) 标准if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional传统的 measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic 史诗般的;宏大的 scale. An exceptionally 异常地 short-lived marriage had imploded内爆; 崩溃、瓦解, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had biggest failure I knew. Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my 新闻界has since represented描绘; 表 关于同志近三年现实表现材料材料类招标技术评分表图表与交易pdf视力表打印pdf用图表说话 pdf 现 as a kind of fairy tale童话 resolution( 剧本 关于骆驼祥子剧本台词历史剧本一秦朝校园心理剧优秀剧本荆轲刺秦王课本剧欲望都市6季英文剧本 等作品中主要情节的)解开. I had no idea then how far the tunnel 隧道 extended延伸, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a 剥掉，除去]of the inessential非必要的. 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决心;毅然 to succeed in the one arena舞台;竞技场fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, 最低谷became the solid foundation基础 on which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable必然的，不可避免的. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously慎重地，谨慎地 that you might as well not have lived at all – in which 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自律 怀 疑;猜想; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies(ruby:红宝石). The knowledge that you have emerged冒出，显露wiser and stronger from setbacks挫折; 倒退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 逆境. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification(考试获得的)资格I ever earned. So given a Time Turner时间转换器, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list 清单;核对表of acquisition获得物 or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV简历, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated复杂的, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility谦逊to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes(人生的)盛衰，沉浮. Now 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 personally will defend保卫 ?最后时刻, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision想象;预想 that which is not, and 可以说most transformative有改革能力的;起改造作用的and revelatory揭示 的; 启示性的capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise 有同感; 起共鸣with humans whose experiences we have never shared. One of the greatest formative (有助于)形成的;成长的，塑 造的 experiences of my life preceded先于，在…之前 Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently. 随后;后来 wrote in those books. This revelation启示;(惊人的、极好的) 发现 came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off(slope off [口语]溜走，溜 掉) to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty赦免;特赦 International’s headquarters总部 in London. There in my little office I read hastily scribbled潦草的走私;偷 带 out of totalitarian极权主义的统治;政体 by men and women who were to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony证词，证据 of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts叙述 of summary概括的，扼要的trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes. 使背井离乡from their homes, or fled into exile流亡、放逐他国, because they had the temerity蛮勇 ; 大胆 to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind. I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled颤抖 uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality残暴、暴行inflicted使遭受 (伤害或破坏等) upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile(脆 弱的?fragility n.) as a child. I was given the job of 护送、陪同 him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man 粉碎;破 坏 by cruelty took my hand with exquisite 高雅的;精致的courtesy 礼貌，谦恭, and wished me future happiness. And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor走廊 and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream 尖叫of pain and horror恐惧，恐怖 such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting own outspokenness直言不讳 against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed. Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly 难以置信地;非常地fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically民主地 elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone. Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow power. I began to have nightmares, literal确确 实实的 [用作强调] nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read. And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before. 动员，调动thousands of people who have never been tortured or (代表;为了)those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation参与 in that process was one of the most humbling(humble:谦逊的)and inspiring experiences of my life. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional 虚构的、编造的magic, that is morally 道上德neutral 中立的、中性的. One might use such an ability to manipulate操纵, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain 篇二:罗琳_哈佛大学演讲稿 1 【分享】一起学英语吧~罗琳在哈佛的演讲稿 中英对照 The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination 失败的好处与想象的重要 Harvard University Commencement Address J.K. Rowling 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 "thank 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。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 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 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。 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 八年级地理上册填图题岩土工程勘察试题省略号的作用及举例应急救援安全知识车间5s试题及答案 。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 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 knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.我在你们这么大时，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 heartbreak. 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 uuffled 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 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 already 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 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 关于书的成语关于读书的排比句社区图书漂流公约怎么写关于读书的小报汉书pdf 都有用。 Given a time machine or 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 capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. 对于第二个主 题 快递公司问题件快递公司问题件货款处理关于圆的周长面积重点题型关于解方程组的题及答案关于南海问题 的选择——想象力的重要性——你们可能会认 为是因为它对我重建生活起到了帮助，但事实并非完全如此。虽 然我愿誓死捍卫睡前要给孩子讲故事的价值观，我对想象力的理 解已经有了更广泛的含义。想象力不仅仅是人类设想还不存在的 事物这种独特的能力，为所有发明和创新提供源泉，它还是人类 改造和揭露现实的能力，使我们同情自己不曾经受的他人苦难。 One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent 篇三:J?K?罗琳在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲(双语) 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 "thank 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。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，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，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 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 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 uuffled 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，