第一篇：J·K·羅琳在哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講

她的演講題目是《失敗的好處和想象的重要性》（The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination）。我讀了一遍講稿，覺得很好，很感染人。

她幾乎沒有談到哈里波特，而是說了年輕時的一些經歷。雖然J·K·羅琳現在很有錢，是英國僅次于女皇的最富有的女人，但是她曾經有一段非常艱辛的日子，30歲了，還差點流落街頭。她主要談的是，自己從這段經歷中學到的東西。

去年的演講嘉賓是比爾·蓋茨，我翻譯了他的演講，影響挺大。今年，我只翻譯了一部分，有興趣的朋友可以在網上找到全部原文和視頻。

二、她首先回憶了自己大學畢業的情景： 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.當時，我只想去寫小說。但是，我的父母出身貧寒，沒有受過大學教育。他們認為，我那些不安分的想象力只是一種怪癖，根本不能用來還房貸，或者掙來養老金。

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.他們希望我再去讀個專業學位，而我想去攻讀英國文學。最后，達成了一個雙方都不甚滿意的妥協：我改學外語。可是等到父母一走開，我立刻報名學習古典文學。

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 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.我不記得將這事告訴了父母。他們可能是在畢業典禮那一天才發現的。我想，在全世界的所有專業中，他們也許認為，不會有比研究希臘神話更沒用的專業了，根本無法換來一間獨立的寬敞衛生間。

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view....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.我要申明，我并不責怪父母。……他們只是希望我不要過窮日子，我不能批評他們。他們自己很窮，我后來一度也很窮，所以我很理解他們，貧窮是一種悲慘的經歷。它帶來恐懼、壓力、有時還有抑郁。它意味著許許多多的羞辱和艱辛。靠自己的努力擺脫貧窮，確實讓人自豪，但是只有傻瓜才會將貧窮本身浪漫化。

接著，她談到了自己那些最悲慘的日子：

A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.我畢業后只過了7年，就失敗得一塌糊涂。

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.短命的婚姻閃電般地破裂，我還失業了，成了一個艱難的單身母親。除了流浪漢，我是當代英國最窮的人之一，真的一無所有。我父母對我的擔憂，我對自己的擔憂，都變成了現實。用平常人的標準，我是我所知道的最失敗的人。

That period of my life was a dark one.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.那段日子是我生命中的黑暗歲月。我不知道還要在黑暗中走多久，很長一段時間中，我有的只是希望，而不是現實。

但是，J.K.羅琳認為，沒有那段日子的失敗，就不會有后來的她。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.為什么我說失敗是有好處的？因為失敗將那些非本質的東西都剝離了。我不再偽裝自己，我找到了真正的我，我將自己所有的精力，投入完成對我最重要的唯一一項工作。

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.要是我以前在其他地方成功了，那么我也許永遠不會有這樣的決心，投身于這個我自信真正屬于我的領域。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.我自由了，因為我最大的恐懼已經成為現實，而我卻還依然活著，依然有一個深愛著的女兒，我還有一臺舊打字機和一個大大的夢想。我生命中最低的低點，成為我重建生活的堅實基礎。

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.失敗使我的內心產生一種安全感，以前通過考試也沒有的安全感。失敗讓我看清自己，以前我從沒認識到自己是這樣的。我發現，我比自己以為的，有更強的意志和決心。我還發現，我有一些比寶石更珍貴的朋友。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.只有到逆境來臨的那一天，你才會真正了解你自己，了解你結識的人。這種了解是真正的財富，雖然是用痛苦換來的，但是它比我以前得到的任何證書都有用。

在演說的下半部分，她還談了畢業后在大*赦*國*際（Amnesty International）倫敦總部的第一份工作。這部分內容也很精彩，不過我就不翻譯了，大家可以去看原文。

三、我要重點談的，是演說的結尾部分。

一般來說，在演講結束時，嘉賓將對畢業生提出期望。我們可以看到，在這種場合，幾乎所有嘉賓，都沒有說―祝愿同學們取得個人成功‖，而是說―希望同學們努力去減輕人類的苦難‖。

比爾·蓋茨去年說：

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world's worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?

哈佛是否鼓勵她的老師去研究解決世界上最嚴重的不平等？哈佛的學生是否從全球那些極端的貧窮中學到了什么……世界性的饑荒……清潔的水資源的缺乏……無法上學的女童……死于非惡性疾病的兒童……哈佛的學生有沒有從中學到東西？

Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's least privileged? 那些世界上過著最優越生活的人們，有沒有從那些最困難的人們身上學到東西？

These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.這些問題并非語言上的修辭。你必須用自己的行動來回答它們。

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.想一想吧，我們在這個院子里的這些人，被給予過什么——天賦、特權、機遇——那么可以這樣說，全世界的人們幾乎有無限的權力，期待我們做出貢獻。

J.K.羅琳今年說：

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.你們是哈佛畢業生的這個事實，說明你們并不很了解失敗。你們也許極其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失敗。說實話，你們眼中的失敗，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，畢竟你們在學業上已經很成功了。

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.…… That is your privilege, and your burden.但是，所有各位哈佛大學2008屆畢業生，你們對其他人的生活了解多少？你們的智慧、你們的能力、你們所受的教育，給了你們獨一無二的優勢，也給了你們獨一無二的責任。……你們的優勢就是你們的責任。

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better.你們要用自己的地位和影響，為那些被忽略的人們說話；你們不僅要看到那些有權有勢者，也要看到那些無權無勢者；你們要學會設想，那些條件不如你們的人們是如何生活的；那樣的話，不僅你們的親人們將為你們感到自豪，而且千千萬萬的人們將因為你們的幫助而生活得更好。

We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.我們不需要改變世界的魔法，我們自己的體內就有這樣的力量：那就是我們一直在夢想，讓這個世界變得更美好。（完）

第二篇：J·K·羅琳在哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講

她首先說了自己如何構思演講稿，以及選擇的兩個演講主題。

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.福斯特校長，哈佛集團的各位成員，監管理事會的各位理事，各位老師，各位自豪的家長，以及最重要的各位畢業生同學，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 have 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 Gryffindor reunion.我想說的第一句話，就是“謝謝”。不僅因為哈佛給了我這樣非同一般的榮譽，還因為為了構思今天的演講，我忍受了幾個星期的擔驚受怕、茶飯不思的生 活，使得我體重減輕。這真可謂“雙贏”啊！現在，我唯一要做的就是深呼吸，偷偷看一眼四周飄揚的紅色旗幟，讓自己相信真的來到了世界上最大的“格蘭芬多” 聚會。

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, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.在畢業典禮上發表演講，是一項巨大的責任，令我倍感壓力。直到我回憶起了自己的畢業典禮，才稍稍放松。那一次的演講嘉賓是杰出的英國哲學家瑪麗·沃 諾克。回想她的演講，極大地幫助我寫作自己的演講稿，因為我發現一點也不記得她的任何一句話了。這個發現讓我如釋重負，不再害怕自己在不經意間就對你們產 生影響，讓你們放棄在商業、法律、政治方面的大好前途，去追求成為一個快樂巫師的那種令人眩暈的愉悅。

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.你們明白嗎？如果多年以后，你們只記得我講的這個“快樂巫師”的笑話，我就已經超過瑪麗·沃諾克了。可以實現的目標，是自己改進的第一步。38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 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 have expired between that day and this.實際上，我真的是絞盡腦汁，思索今天自己到底應該講什么。我問自己，當年我畢業的時候，希望知道哪些事情；以及21年后的今天，我又從人生中得到哪些重要的經驗教訓。

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.我得到了兩個回答。這個美妙的日子，我們聚集一堂，慶祝你們在學業上的成功，但是我決定跟你們說說失敗的好處。以及當你們站在所謂“真實世界”的門檻之上的時候，我要頌揚想象力的重要性。

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.這樣的主題可能看上去有點異想天開和自相矛盾，但是請聽下去。

三、她開始回憶自己大學畢業時的情景：

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.對于一個42歲的婦女來說，回想自己21歲畢業時的情景，是一種稍稍令人不安的經歷。回到21年之前，我正遭受煎熬，不知道在自己內心的追求與父母對我的期望之間，應該如何平衡。

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 would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.當時，我確信自己一生中唯一想做的事情，就是去寫小說。但是，我的父母出身貧寒，沒有受過大學教育。他們認為，我那些不安分的想象力只是一種怪癖，根72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 本不能用來還房貸，或者掙來養老金。我現在知道，這種人生的反諷，有著卡通片里大鐵砧般的巨大打擊力。

So they 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.他們希望我再去讀個職業學位，而我想去研究英國文學。最后，達成了一個雙方都不甚滿意的妥協：我改學語言學。可是等到父母的車消失在公路的轉角，我就立刻拋掉了德語，奔向古典文學的道路。

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.我不記得將這事告訴了父母。他們可能是在畢業典禮那一天才發現的。我想，在全世界的所有專業中，他們也許認為，不會有比研究希臘神話更沒用的專業了，根本無法換來一間獨立的寬敞衛生間。

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.我要申明，我并不責怪父母有這種看法。父母只在一段時間內，對你的人生方向負責；當你長大以后，你自己就控制了人生方向，必須自己承擔責任。而且，他們只是希望我不要過窮日子，我不能批評他們。他們自己很窮，我后來一度也很窮，所以我很理解他們，貧窮是一種悲慘的經歷。它帶來恐懼、壓力、有時還有抑 郁。它意味著許許多多的羞辱和艱辛。靠自己的努力擺脫貧窮，確實讓人自豪，但是只有傻瓜才會將貧窮本身浪漫化。接著，她談到了自己那些最悲慘的日子：

A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 我畢業后只過了7年，就失敗得一塌糊涂。

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.短命的婚姻閃電般地破裂，我還失業了，成了一個艱難的單身母親。除了流浪漢，我是當代英國最窮的人之一，真的一無所有。我父母對我的擔憂，我對自己的擔憂，都變成了現實。用平常人的標準，我是我所知道的最失敗的人。

That period of my life was a dark one.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.那段日子是我生命中的黑暗歲月。我不知道還要在黑暗中走多久，很長一段時間中，我有的只是希望，而不是現實。

但是，J.K.羅琳認為，沒有那段日子的失敗，就不會有后來的她。

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.為什么我說失敗是有好處的？因為失敗將那些非本質的東西都剝離了。我不再偽裝自己，我找到了真正的我，我將自己所有的精力，投入完成對我最重要的唯一一項工作。

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.要是我以前在其他地方成功了，那么我也許永遠不會有這樣的決心，投身于這個我自信真正屬于我的領域。

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.我自由了，因為我最大的恐懼已經成為現實，而我卻還依然活著，依然有一個深愛著的女兒，我還有一臺舊打字機和一個大大的夢想。我生命中最低的低點，成為我重建生活的堅實基礎。142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 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.失敗使我的內心產生一種安全感，以前通過考試也沒有的安全感。失敗讓我看清自己，以前我從沒認識到自己是這樣的。我發現，我比自己以為的，有更強的意志和決心。我還發現，我有一些比寶石更珍貴的朋友。

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.只有到逆境來臨的那一天，你才會真正了解你自己，了解你結識的人。這種了解是真正的財富，雖然是用痛苦換來的，但是它比我以前得到的任何證書都有用。在演說的下半部分，她還談了畢業后在大*赦*國*際（Amnesty International）倫敦總部的第一份工作。這部分內容也很精彩，不過我就不翻譯了，大家可以去看原文。

三、我要重點談的，是演說的結尾部分。

一般來說，在演講結束時，嘉賓將對畢業生提出期望。我們可以看到，在這種場合，幾乎所有嘉賓，都沒有說“祝愿同學們取得個人成功”，而是說“希望同學們努力去減輕人類的苦難”。比爾·蓋茨去年說：

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world's worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty...the prevalence of world hunger...the scarcity of clean water...the girls kept out of school...the children who die from diseases we can cure? 哈佛是否鼓勵她的老師去研究解決世界上最嚴重的不平等？哈佛的學生是否從全球那些極端的貧窮中學到了什么......世界性的饑荒......清潔的水資源的缺乏......無法上學的女童......死于非惡性疾病的兒童......哈佛的學生有沒有從中學到東西？

Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's least privileged? 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 那些世界上過著最優越生活的人們，有沒有從那些最困難的人們身上學到東西？ These are not rhetorical questionsin talent, privilege, and opportunity-there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.想一想吧，我們在這個院子里的這些人，被給予過什么----天賦、特權、機遇----那么可以這樣說，全世界的人們幾乎有無限的權力，期待我們做出貢獻。J.K.羅琳今年說：

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.你們是哈佛畢業生的這個事實，說明你們并不很了解失敗。你們也許極其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失敗。說實話，你們眼中的失敗，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，畢竟你們在學業上已經很成功了。

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.......That is your privilege, and your burden.但是，所有各位哈佛大學2008屆畢業生，你們對其他人的生活了解多少？你們的智慧、你們的能力、你們所受的教育，給了你們獨一無二的優勢，也給了你們獨一無二的責任。......你們的優勢就是你們的責任。

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better.你們要用自己的地位和影響，為那些被忽略的人們說話；你們不僅要看到那些有權有勢者，也要看到那些無權無勢者；你們要學會設想，那些條件不如你們的人209 210 211 212 213 214 215 們是如何生活的；那樣的話，不僅你們的親人們將為你們感到自豪，而且千千萬萬的人們將因為你們的幫助而生活得更好。

We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.我們不需要改變世界的魔法，我們自己的體內就有這樣的力量：那就是我們一直在夢想，讓這個世界變得更美好。

第三篇：雙語J·K·羅琳在哈佛大學08年畢業典禮上的演講

她的演講題目是《失敗的好處和想象的重要性》（The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination）。

她幾乎沒有談到哈里波特，而是說了年輕時的一些經歷。雖然J·K·羅琳現在很有錢，是英國僅次于女皇的最富有的女人，但是她曾經有一段非常艱辛的日子，30歲了，還差點流落街頭。她主要談的是，自己從這段經歷中學到的東西。

我只找到了一部分中文翻譯，有興趣的朋友可以看下面的原文和視頻。

二、她首先回憶了自己大學畢業的情景：

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.當時，我只想去寫小說。但是，我的父母出身貧寒，沒有受過大學教育。他們認為，我那些不安分的想象力只是一種怪癖，根本不能用來還房貸，或者掙來養老金。

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.他們希望我再去讀個專業學位，而我想去攻讀英國文學。最后，達成了一個雙方都不甚滿意的妥協：我改學外語。可是等到父母一走開，我立刻報名學習古典文學。

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 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.我不記得將這事告訴了父母。他們可能是在畢業典禮那一天才發現的。我想，在全世界的所有專業中，他們也許認為，不會有比研究希臘神話更沒用的專業了，根本無法換來一間獨立的寬敞衛生間。

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view....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.我要申明，我并不責怪父母。??他們只是希望我不要過窮日子，我不能批評他們。他們自己很窮，我后來一度也很窮，所以我很理解他們，貧窮是一種悲慘的經歷。它帶來恐懼、壓力、有時還有抑郁。它意味著許許多多的羞辱和艱辛。靠自己的努力擺脫貧窮，確實讓人自豪，但是只有傻瓜才會將貧窮本身浪漫化。

接著，她談到了自己那些最悲慘的日子：

A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.我畢業后只過了7年，就失敗得一塌糊涂。

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.短命的婚姻閃電般地破裂，我還失業了，成了一個艱難的單身母親。除了流浪漢，我是當代英國最窮的人之一，真的一無所有。我父母對我的擔憂，我對自己的擔憂，都變成了現實。用平常人的標準，我是我所知道的最失敗的人。

That period of my life was a dark one.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.那段日子是我生命中的黑暗歲月。我不知道還要在黑暗中走多久，很長一段時間中，我有的只是希望，而不是現實。

但是，J.K.羅琳認為，沒有那段日子的失敗，就不會有后來的她。

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.為什么我說失敗是有好處的？因為失敗將那些非本質的東西都剝離了。我不再偽裝自己，我找到了真正的我，我將自己所有的精力，投入完成對我最重要的唯一一項工作。

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.要是我以前在其他地方成功了，那么我也許永遠不會有這樣的決心，投身于這個我自信真正屬于我的領域。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.我自由了，因為我最大的恐懼已經成為現實，而我卻還依然活著，依然有一個深愛著的女兒，我還有一臺舊打字機和一個大大的夢想。我生命中最低的低點，成為我重建生活的堅實基礎。

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.失敗使我的內心產生一種安全感，以前通過考試也沒有的安全感。失敗讓我看清自己，以前我從沒認識到自己是這樣的。我發現，我比自己以為的，有更強的意志和決心。我還發現，我有一些比寶石更珍貴的朋友。

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.只有到逆境來臨的那一天，你才會真正了解你自己，了解你結識的人。這種了解是真正的財富，雖然是用痛苦換來的，但是它比我以前得到的任何證書都有用。

三、我要重點談的，是演說的結尾部分。

一般來說，在演講結束時，嘉賓將對畢業生提出期望。我們可以看到，在這種場合，幾乎所有嘉賓，都沒有說“祝愿同學們取得個人成功”，而是說“希望同學們努力去減輕人類的苦難”。

比爾·蓋茨去年說：

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world's worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty ? the prevalence of world hunger ? the scarcity of clean water ?the girls kept out of school ? the children who die from diseases we can cure?

哈佛是否鼓勵她的老師去研究解決世界上最嚴重的不平等？哈佛的學生是否從全球那些極端的貧窮中學到了什么??世界性的饑荒??清潔的水資源的缺乏??無法上學的女童??死于非惡性疾病的兒童??哈佛的學生有沒有從中學到東西？

Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's least privileged?

那些世界上過著最優越生活的人們，有沒有從那些最困難的人們身上學到東西？ These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.這些問題并非語言上的修辭。你必須用自己的行動來回答它們。

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.想一想吧，我們在這個院子里的這些人，被給予過什么——天賦、特權、機遇——那么可以這樣說，全世界的人們幾乎有無限的權力，期待我們做出貢獻。

J.K.羅琳今年說：

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.你們是哈佛畢業生的這個事實，說明你們并不很了解失敗。你們也許極其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失敗。說實話，你們眼中的失敗，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，畢竟你們在學業上已經很成功了。

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.?? That is your privilege, and your burden.但是，所有各位哈佛大學2008屆畢業生，你們對其他人的生活了解多少？你們的智慧、你們的能力、你們所受的教育，給了你們獨一無二的優勢，也給了你們獨一無二的責任。??你們的優勢就是你們的責任。

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better.你們要用自己的地位和影響，為那些被忽略的人們說話；你們不僅要看到那些有權有勢者，也要看到那些無權無勢者；你們要學會設想，那些條件不如你們的人們是如何生活的；那樣的話，不僅你們的親人們將為你們感到自豪，而且千千萬萬的人們將因為你們的幫助而生活得更好。

We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.我們不需要改變世界的魔法，我們自己的體內就有這樣的力量：那就是我們一直在夢想，讓這個世界變得更美好。

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination Harvard University Commencement Address J.K.Rowling

Copyright June 2008

As prepared for delivery

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 I've experienced 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 fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.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.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 towards personal improvement.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.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.These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with 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 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 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.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.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 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.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.What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.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.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 unruffled privilege 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 academically.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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 in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment 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 of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries.I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government.Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave 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 uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him.He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child.I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her.She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness 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 fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically 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 humans, to gain or maintain power.I began to have nightmares, literal 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.Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of 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 in that process was one of the most humbling 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 minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral.One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages;they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally;they can refuse to know.I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters.They are often more afraid.What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters.For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives.It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.Even your nationality sets you apart.The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower.The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders.That is your privilege, and your burden.If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better.We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.I am nearly finished.I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21.The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life.They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters.At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships.And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives.Thank you very much.（J.K.Rowling.2008.Harvard University Commencement Address.Harvard University, MA

第四篇：J·K·羅琳在哈佛大學08年畢業典禮上的演講raw

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination Harvard University Commencement Address J.K.Rowling

Copyright June 2008

As prepared for delivery

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 I've experienced 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 fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.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.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 towards personal improvement.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.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.These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with 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 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 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.…

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.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 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.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.What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.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.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 unruffled privilege 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 academically.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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 in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment 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 of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries.I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government.Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave 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 uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him.He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child.I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since.The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her.She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness 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 fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically 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 humans, to gain or maintain power.I began to have nightmares, literal 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.Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of 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 in that process was one of the most humbling 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 minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral.One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all.They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages;they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally;they can refuse to know.I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters.They are often more afraid.What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters.For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives.It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities.Even your nationality sets you apart.The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower.The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders.That is your privilege, and your burden.If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice;if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless;if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better.We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.I am nearly finished.I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21.The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life.They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters.At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships.And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives.Thank you very much.（J.K.Rowling.2008.Harvard University Commencement Address.Harvard University, MA

第五篇：jk羅琳在哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講

J·K·羅琳在哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講

J·K·羅琳在哈佛大學畢業典禮上的演講

作者： 阮一峰

日期： 2008年6月17日

一、今年6月5日是哈佛大學的畢業典禮，請來的演講嘉賓是《哈利波特》的作者J.K.羅琳女士。她的演講題目是《失敗的好處和想象的重要性》（The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination）。我讀了一遍講稿，覺得很好，很感染人。

她幾乎沒有談到哈里波特，而是說了年輕時的一些經歷。雖然J·K·羅琳現在很有錢，是英國僅次于女皇的最富有的女人，但是她曾經有一段非常艱辛的日子，30歲了，還差點流落街頭。她主要談的是，自己從這段經歷中學到的東西。去年的演講嘉賓是比爾·蓋茨，我翻譯了他的演講，影響挺大。今年，我繼續翻譯，有興趣的朋友可以在網上找到原文和視頻。

二、她首先說了自己如何構思演講稿，以及選擇的兩個演講主題。President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.福斯特校長，哈佛集團的各位成員，監管理事會的各位理事，各位老師，各位自豪的家長，以及最重要的各位畢業生同學，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 have 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 Gryffindor reunion.我想說的第一句話，就是“謝謝”。不僅因為哈佛給了我這樣非同一般的榮譽，還因為為了構思今天的演講，我忍受了幾個星期的擔驚受怕、茶飯不思的生活，使得我體重減輕。這真可謂“雙贏”啊！現在，我唯一要做的就是深呼吸，偷偷看一眼四周飄揚的紅色旗幟，讓自己相信真的來到了世界上最大的“格蘭芬多”聚會。

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, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.在畢業典禮上發表演講，是一項巨大的責任，令我倍感壓力。直到我回憶起了自己的畢業典禮，才稍稍放松。那一次的演講嘉賓是杰出的英國哲學家瑪麗·沃諾克。回想她的演講，極大地幫助我寫作自己的演講稿，因為我發現一點也不記得她的任何一句話了。這個發現讓我如釋重負，不再害怕自己在不經意間就對你們產生影響，讓你們放棄在商業、法律、政治方面的大好前途，去追求成為一個快樂巫師的那種令人眩暈的愉悅。

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.你們明白嗎？如果多年以后，你們只記得我講的這個“快樂巫師”的笑話，我就已經超過瑪麗·沃諾克了。可以實現的目標，是自己改進的第一步。

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 have expired between that day and this.實際上，我真的是絞盡腦汁，思索今天自己到底應該講什么。我問自己，當年我畢業的時候，希望知道哪些事情；以及21年后的今天，我又從人生中得到哪些重要的經驗教訓。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.我得到了兩個回答。這個美妙的日子，我們聚集一堂，慶祝你們在學業上的成功，但是我決定跟你們說說失敗的好處。以及當你們站在所謂“真實世界”的門檻之上的時候，我要頌揚想象力的重要性。

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.這樣的主題可能看上去有點異想天開和自相矛盾，但是請聽下去。

三、她開始回憶自己大學畢業時的情景：

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.對于一個42歲的婦女來說，回想自己21歲畢業時的情景，是一種稍稍令人不安的經歷。回到21年之前，我正遭受煎熬，不知道在自己內心的追求與父母對我的期望之間，應該如何平衡。

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 would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.當時，我確信自己一生中唯一想做的事情，就是去寫小說。但是，我的父母出身貧寒，沒有受過大學教育。他們認為，我那些不安分的想象力只是一種怪癖，根本不能用來還房貸，或者掙來養老金。我現在知道，這種人生的反諷，有著卡通片里大鐵砧般的巨大打擊力。

So they 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.他們希望我再去讀個職業學位，而我想去研究英國文學。最后，達成了一個雙方都不甚滿意的妥協：我改學語言學。可是等到父母的車消失在公路的轉角，我就立刻拋掉了德語，奔向古典文學的道路。

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.我不記得將這事告訴了父母。他們可能是在畢業典禮那一天才發現的。我想，在全世界的所有專業中，他們也許認為，不會有比研究希臘神話更沒用的專業了，根本無法換來一間獨立的寬敞衛生間。

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.我要申明，我并不責怪父母有這種看法。父母只在一段時間內，對你的人生方向負責；當你長大以后，你自己就控制了人生方向，必須自己承擔責任。而且，他們只是希望我不要過窮日子，我不能批評他們。他們自己很窮，我后來一度也很窮，所以我很理解他們，貧窮是一種悲慘的經歷。它帶來恐懼、壓力、有時還有抑郁。它意味著許許多多的羞辱和艱辛。靠自己的努力擺脫貧窮，確實讓人自豪，但是只有傻瓜才會將貧窮本身浪漫化。

接著，她談到了自己那些最悲慘的日子：

A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.我畢業后只過了7年，就失敗得一塌糊涂。

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.短命的婚