JKrowling 哈佛毕业典礼演讲(2)

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 in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.

其中一个影响最大的经历发生在我写哈利波特之前，为我随后写书提供了很多想法。这些想法成形于我早期的工作经历，在20多岁时，尽管我可以在午餐时间里悄悄写故事，可为了付房租，我做的主要工作是在伦敦总部的大赦国际研究部门。

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.

在我的小办公室，我看到了人们匆匆写的信件，它们是从极权主义政权被偷送出来的。那些人冒着被监禁的危险，告知外面的世界他们那里正在发生的事情。我看到了那些无迹可寻的人的照片，它们是被那些绝望的家人和朋友送来的。我看过拷问受害者的证词和被害的照片。我打开过手写的目击证词，描述绑架和强奸犯的审判和处决。

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 who they had left behind.

我有很多的同事是前政治犯，他们已离开家园流离失所，或逃亡流放，因为他们敢于怀疑政府、独立思考。来我们办公室的访客，包括那些前来提供信息，或想设法知道那些被迫留下的同志发生了什么事的人。

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.

我将永远不会忘记一个非洲酷刑的受害者，一名当时还没有我大的年轻男子，他因在故乡的经历而精神错乱。在摄像机前讲述被残暴地摧残的时候，他颤抖失控。他比我高一英尺，却看上去像一个脆弱的儿童。我被安排随后护送他到地铁站，这名生活已被残酷地打乱的男子，小心翼翼地握着我的手，祝我未来生活幸福。 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.

只要我活着，我还会记得，在一个空荡荡的的走廊，突然从背后的门里，传来我从未听过的痛苦和恐惧的尖叫。门打开了，调查员探出头请求我，为坐在她旁边的青年男子，调一杯热饮料。她刚刚给他的消息是，为了报复他对国家政权的批评，他的母亲已经被捕并执行了枪决。

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.

在我20多岁的那段日子，每一天的工作，都在提醒我自己是多么幸运。生活在一个民选政府的国家，依法申述与公开审理，是所有人的权利。

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. 每一天，我都能看到更多有关恶人的证据，他们为了获得或维持权力，对自己的同胞犯下暴行。我开始做噩梦，真正意义上的噩梦，全都和我所见所闻有关。 And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

同时在这里我也了解到更多关于人类的善良，比我以前想象的要多很多。 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.

大赦动员成千上万没有因为个人信仰而受到折磨或监禁的人，去为那些遭受这种不幸的人奔走。人类同理心的力量，引发集体行动，拯救生命，解放囚犯。个人的福祉和安全有保证的普通百姓，携手合作，大量挽救那些他们素不相识，也许永远不会见面的人。我用自己微薄的力量参与了这一过程，也获得了更大的启发。 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.

不同于在这个星球上任何其他的动物，人类可以学习和理解未曾经历过的东西。他们可以将心比心、设身处地的理解他人。

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.

当然，这种能力，就像在我虚构的魔法世界里一样，在道德上是中立的。一个人可能会利用这种能力去操纵控制，也有人选择去了解同情。

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.

而很多人选择不去使用他们的想象力。他们选择留在自己舒适的世界里，从来不愿花力气去想想如果生在别处会怎样。他们可以拒绝去听别人的尖叫，看一眼囚禁的笼子；他们可以封闭自己的内心，只要痛苦不触及个人，他们可以拒绝去了解。

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.

我可能会受到诱惑，去嫉妒那样生活的人。但我不认为他们做的噩梦会比我更少。选择生活在狭窄的空间，可以导致不敢面对开阔的视野，给自己带来恐惧感。我认为不愿展开想像的人会看到更多的怪兽，他们往往更感到更害怕。

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.

更甚的是，那些选择不去同情的人，可能会激活真正的怪兽。因为尽管自己没有犯下罪恶，我们却通过冷漠与之勾结。

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.

我18岁开始从古典文学中汲取许多知识，其中之一当时并不完全理解，那就是希腊作家普鲁塔克所说：我们内心获得的，将改变外在的现实。

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.

那是一个惊人的论断，在我们生活的每一天里被无数次证实。它指明我们与外部世界有无法脱离的联系，我们以自身的存在接触着他人的生命。

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