失败的好处和想象力的重要性
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
J.K.罗琳
By J.K. Rowling
福斯特主席，哈佛集团和监管理事会的各位成员、各位老师、家长、全体毕业生们：
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,
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到想吐的感觉，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。
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.
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贝洛尼斯·玛丽，对她演讲的回忆，对我写今天的演讲稿，提供了极大的帮助，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。
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.
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贝洛尼斯。建立可实现的目标——这是提高自我的第一步。
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.
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经验教训。
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.
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，我决定跟你们谈谈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，我还要褒扬关键性的想象力的重要性。
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.
这些似乎是不切实际或自相矛盾的选择，但请先容我讲完。
These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but bear with 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。
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.
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，他们都来自贫穷的不为人所注意的地方，都没有上过大学，坚持认为我过度的想象力是一个令人惊讶的个人怪癖，根本不足以让我偿还贷款，或者取得足够的养老金。
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.
我现在明白反讽就像用卡通铁砧去打击你，但……
I know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but…
他们希望我去拿个职业学位，而我想去攻读英国文学。回想起来，当时达成了一个双方都不甚满意的妥协：我改学现代语言。可是还没等到父母的汽车在路尽头绕过街角，我立刻放弃了德语而报名学习古典文学。
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.
我不记得什么时候将我学古典文学的这事告诉了父母，他们可能是在我毕业典礼那一天才发现的。我想，在全世界的所有学科中，他们也许认为，不会有比研究希腊神话更没用的学科了，根本无法换来一间独立宽敞的卫生间。
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.
我想澄清一下：我不会因为父母的观点，而责怪他们。责怪父母给你指错方向是有一个截止期的。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，而指责他们。他们亲身经历过贫穷，我后来也一度很穷，所以在这点上我完全赞同他们的观点。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。
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.
我在你们这个年龄，最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
我在你们这么大时，尽管明显缺少在大学学习的动力，我花了太久时间在咖啡吧写故事，而在课堂的时间却很少。但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。
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.
现在，我不想愚蠢地假设，因为你们年轻、有天分，并且受过良好的教育，就从来不懂得艰难或心碎的时刻。才华和智慧，从来不会使人对命运的变化无常有所准备。我也不会假设大家坐在这里冷静地满足于自身的优越感。
