＊ＣｈｕｎＹｕ＊

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
Faust校長，哈佛校委會的主席、成員們，教授們，為子女驕傲的父母們，還有，所有的畢業生們，

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.
首先我要說的是，謝謝你們。不僅是因為哈佛給了我如此高的榮譽，還因為，在得知我將要給出這份畢業致辭的幾個星期內，憂心忡忡，食不下咽，減了肥。真是個雙贏局面！現在，我所要做的，就是，深呼吸，緊盯著紅紅的飄帶，然后自欺欺人，相信我身處于全世界受到最好教育的哈利波特大會上。

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.
給一個畢業致辭是一個巨大的責任，我幾乎是這么認為的，直到我開始回想我的畢業典禮。我的畢業典禮上，受邀做出致辭的是英國著名的哲學家 Mary Warnock 女爵。回憶她的演講，給寫我自己的演講稿，幫了大忙，因為，我根本不記得任何她說過的話了。這個“解放”了我的發現，促成了我完成了演講稿，不再擔心，我可能無意之中，影響到你們：傻傻地樂著，想成為一個很炫的巫師，放棄商業、法律、政治上的大好前程

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.
你看，如果多少年后，你們所能想到的是這個“很炫的巫師”的笑話，我還是要比 Mary Warnock 女爵強點。可以實現的目標：邁向提升的第一步。

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.
事實上，為了今天要說什么，我絞盡腦汁。我問自己，我畢業那天，我希望我了解什麼，還有我畢業後的這21年裡，我得到了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.
我想出了兩個答案。在今天，如此美好的一天，我們聚集一堂，慶祝你們學業上的成功，（其一，）我要跟你們說說失敗給我們帶來的好處；你們正站在一個“真實人生”的入口處，（其二，）我想要突出強調想像力的重要。

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me. 
這聽起來有些脫離實際，或者相互抵觸，但是，請先忍一忍。

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.
回頭看我畢業后的這21年，對我這個已經42歲的人而言，是個不太自在的體驗。在我目前走過的一半的生命旅程之前，我一直在我自己的愿望和最親的人對我的期盼之間，奮力地尋求平衡。

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 could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
我一直非常清楚自己唯一想做的事情，就是寫小說。然而，我的父母，自小貧困，從沒有上過大學，他們認為我那些過度的想象力是一個滑稽的怪習慣，這個習慣，不能用來付房貸，也不能保住一份養老金。

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.
他們希望我念一個實用的學位；我希望讀英語文學。后來妥協的結果——回過頭來看這個妥協，其實誰也不滿意——是，學外語（Modern Language，一般是對外國語言的統稱）。父母離開的汽車還沒有轉過街角，我就把德語專業換成了古典文學專業。

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.
我忘了我是否曾經告訴過我的父母我念了古典文學（Classics，主要是學習古希臘、古羅馬的文學，藝術，歷史，語言等），他們可能直到參加我畢業典禮的那一天才第一次知道。在這個星球上所有的科目里，我想，在憧憬擁有一間豪華浴室的時候，他們是很難找到一個科目比希臘神話更沒用的了。

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.
我要說明的是，打括號，我不因為父母的觀點而責怪他們。有一天，等你成人了，自己可以決定事情了，需要承擔責任了，那個時候，你就不再怨他們總是要違背你的意愿，把你領錯路了。而且，我的父母希望我永遠不要過上窮日子，我無法因為這個而批評他們。他們自己窮，我也窮過，和他們一樣，我也認為，這不是一個有尊嚴的體驗。貧窮帶來恐懼不安，帶來壓力，有時候還會帶來抑郁。貧窮意味著上千個小的屈辱、不幸。通過自己的努力擺脫貧困，是非常值得驕傲的事情，但是，只有傻子才會把貧窮浪漫化。

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. 
我在你們這個年紀時，最害怕的不是貧窮，而是失敗。

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.
像你們這么大時，在大學里，雖然我非常缺乏動力去學習，花了太多的時間泡在咖啡館里寫小說，用了太少的時間在課堂上，我對考試很在行，而這個，在很長的時間里，對我和我同學而言，都是衡量成功與否的標準。

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.
我還沒糊涂到認為你們因為年輕，聰明、受過好的教育，就從不知道艱難或苦痛。天賦和能力還從沒有讓任何人豁免于命運之神的掌控，而且我也從不認為在座的各位，享受過波瀾不驚的特權，和永遠的知足常樂。

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.
但是，你們是從哈佛的校門走出去這個事實，卻顯示了，你們不是那么了解失敗。驅使你們前行的，對失敗的恐懼和對成功的熱望，大概差不多。事實上，你們對于失敗的理解可能和一般人對于成功的概念離得不太遠。學業上，你們的起點已經很高了。

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.
最終，我們都得明白，失敗是些什么，這個世界，總是迫不及待地要給你一套標準，如果你讓它那么做的話。所以我想，合理地說，用任何常規的標準來衡量，大學畢業后的7年，我非常失敗。一個非常短命的婚姻，失業，單身母親，在現如今的英國，找不到比我更窮的了，除了流浪漢。我父母對我的憂心，我對自己的憂心，都得面對，按任何一個通常的標準來看，我是我所知道的最大的失敗。

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.
現在，我站在這里，不是要告訴你們，失敗很好玩。那段時間，在我的生命里，是黑的，我怎么也不會想到，有一天，我的故事會成為報紙上的一則童話。在那段黑暗的地道里，我根本不知道，哪里才是盡頭，很長的一段時間里，任何一點盡頭的亮光，都只是希望，而非現實。

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.
那么為什么我要來談失敗帶來的好處呢？很簡單，因為失敗帶走了一切非本質的東西。我不再裝作一個不是我自己的我，我開始集中精力，全力以赴，去完成我覺得唯一的重要的事情。如果我在其他方面有所成功，我大概永遠不會有那個決心、毅力在我自認為自己所歸屬的領域有所建樹。我被“解放”了，因為最擔心的事情都已經發生了，我還活著，還有個我愛的女兒，還有臺老的打印機，還有個了不起的想法。我跌倒谷底，堅硬的巖石上，我重建人生。

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.
你們可能永遠不會有我這么巨大的失敗，但是，生命中，有些挫折、失敗不可避免。活著，就不可能沒失敗過什么，除非，你極度謹慎，那樣你可能就不算活過——如果是這樣，你已經缺省的算失敗了。

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.
失敗給了我內在的安全感，這個是考試給不了的。失敗讓我認識到自己，這個，我從其他任何地方也學不到。我發現了我有很強的意志力，發現了超出我自己原以為的自控力，還發現我的朋友，真的比紅寶石還珍貴。

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.
回首看你的失敗，你得到的那些更睿智、更強烈的經驗、想法，永遠會跟著你，扎根于你的求生能力之中。你將永遠不能真正了解自己，了解你和周圍人之間關系的力量，除非你都體驗過，在一種不幸的境遇之下。這些認知，真是禮物，因為，這些都是痛過所獲，對我來說，這比任何我拿過的文憑都要來得有價值。



本譯文轉載自"愚人碼頭", 英文原稿轉自"Harvard Magzine"