J.K.罗琳2008年在哈佛大学毕业演讲

JK罗琳 - 2008哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲2010-06-13 21:55/space-3594406-do-blog-id-1007584.htmlJK罗琳2008哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲译文(2009-10-24 18:47:39)转载标签：杂谈福斯特主席、哈佛同仁和监察委员会的各位员工，各位老师，家长、同学们: 首先请允许我说一声谢谢。

哈佛给予我的不仅仅是无上的荣誉，还有连日来因为一想到这个演讲，带来的恐惧以及恐惧导致的阵阵恶心让我减肥成功。

这真是一个双赢的局面。

现在我要做的就是深呼吸，眯着眼睛看着眼前的大红横幅，安慰自己只是在世界上最大的矮人大会上。

发表毕业演说是一个巨大的责任，我的思绪一下子回到自己的毕业典礼上。

那天做报告的是英国著名的哲学家Baroness Mary Warnock，通过对她的演讲的回忆对我写今天的演讲稿给予了极大地帮助。

因为我不记得她说过的任何一句话了，这个发现让我释然，让我不再有任何恐惧。

我可能会无意中影响你，放弃在商业、法律或政治等有前途的职业而为眩晕的愉悦成为一个快乐的魔法师。

你们都明白，如果在若干年后您还记得'快乐的魔法师'这个笑话，说明我已经超越了Baroness Mary Warnock。

可实现的目标：个人提高的第一步。

其实，我为今天应该告诉你们什么已经殚精竭虑了。

我曾问自己：我从毕业到现在的这些年里，学到和了解了什么重要的教训。

我已想出了两个答案。

在这个美好的一天，当我们正聚集在一起庆祝您毕业的时刻，我已决定与你们谈谈失败的好处；另一方面，你们站在'现实生活'的门槛上，我要歌颂至关重要的想象力。

这些似乎是不切实际或似是而非的选择，但请原谅我。

让一个已经42岁的人回顾在她21岁毕业时情景，是个让人有点不舒服的经历。

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两者之间取得平衡。

我一直深信我唯一想做的事----写小说。

T h e F r i n g e B e n e f i t s o f F a i l u r e,a n d t h e I m p o r t a n c e o f I m a g i n a t i o n H a r v a r d U n i v e r s i t y C o m m e n c e m e n t A d d r e s s J.K.R o w l i n g T e r c e n t e n a r y T h e a t r e,J u n e5,2008 失败的好处和想象力的重要性哈佛大学毕业典礼J.K.罗琳2008年6月5日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。

“魔法教母”J.K.罗琳在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲“魔法教母”J.K.罗琳在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲演讲者：J.K·罗琳(J.K.Rowling)，英国奇幻小说家，代表作为《哈利·波特》系列作品，。

她是英国有记录以来最畅销的作家。

.......“生活是严酷的，也是复杂的，更不处于任何人的掌控中;谦逊地懂得并接受这一点，会帮助你安然度过生活中的风浪。

"......."如果你选择了用你的身份和影响力来为那些没有声音的人呐喊;如果你保留了想象的能力，能够与那些无法拥有幸运的人们感同身受;那么，我将欢呼：我们并不需要魔法来改造世界。

在内心深处，我们已经拥有了所需的所有力量：想象更好世界的力量。

”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 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.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 promisingcareers 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 to self-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 may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but 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.I know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but…They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; Iwanted 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 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.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.。

J.K. Rowling致Faust校长，哈佛集团以及哈佛监事委员会的各位成员，各位教职员工，众多自豪的家长，以及最为重要的——各位毕业生们：我想要说的第一句话是“谢谢你们”。

这份感谢不仅来自于哈佛赋予我如此非同寻常的荣誉，更是由于几个星期以来每当我想到今天的致词就会觉得头晕恶心，因而终于成功的减肥了。

这就是“双赢”啊！现在，我只需要深呼吸几次，瞄几眼红色的横幅，然后装模作样的让自己相信，我正身处世界上受过最好教育的哈里波特迷的盛大集会之中。

在毕业典礼上致词意味着极大的责任——我这样想着，直到我开始回想我自己的毕业典礼。

那天致词的是著名的英国哲学家Baroness Mary Warnock。

对于她的演讲的回忆也极大地帮助了我完成现在这份，因为，我完全想不起来她说了什么。

这个具有解放意义的重大发现让我无所畏惧的写下自己的致词，因为我再也不必担心会在不经意间对你们造成影响，以至于让你们为了成为一个快乐巫师的虚幻憧憬，就放弃自己在商业、法律界或政界的远大前程。

看到了吧？就算若干年后你们对我的演讲的印象只剩下这个“快乐的巫师”的笑话，那我还是领先了Baroness Mary Warnock一步的。

能够达成的目标是自我改善的第一步。

事实上，为了确定今天应该对你们说些什么，我真是绞尽了脑汁。

我问自己，在我自己的毕业典礼上，我曾期待知道什么？而自那天开始到现在的21年间，我又学到了那些教训？我想到了两个答案。

在今天这个美妙的时刻，当我们齐聚一堂庆祝你们取得学业成功的时候，我决定跟你们谈谈失败带来的好处。

另外，在你们正要一脚踏入所谓“真实的生活”的时候，我还要高声赞颂想象力的重大意义。

这些决定看起来颇为荒诞而矛盾，但是啊，请听我慢慢道来。

对于一个已经42岁的妇人来说，回顾21岁毕业典礼的时刻并不是一件十分舒服的事情。

在前半生中我一直奋力挣扎，为了在自己的雄心壮志与亲人对我的期盼之间取得一个平衡。

我自己认定今生唯一想做的事情就是写小说。

失败的附加值和想象力的重要性——JK罗琳在哈佛的演讲福斯特校长，校理事会和校务监督委员会的成员们，各位老师，各位骄傲的父母们，还有最重要的，毕业生们：首先我要说谢谢，不只是因为哈佛给了我莫大的荣誉，也是因为这几个礼拜一直思考怎么做这个毕业演讲带来的焦虑和担忧让我成功地减了肥。

真是喜上加喜！现在我只需要做几个深呼吸，偷偷看着那面红色的旗子，然后骗自己说我正在一个受过世界最优秀的教育的哈利波特们的大会上。

做一个毕业演讲的责任很大。

但是当我回忆了一下我毕业的时候听到的毕业演讲以后，我改变了我的想法。

那天来做演讲的人是英国著名的哲学家baroness mary warnock 。

回忆她的演讲真的对我写这个稿子帮助很大，因为我发现我连一个字都不记得了。

这个发现让我大大地松了一口气，我不再担心有的人会因为我演讲而放弃他们很有前途的经济、法律或者是政治方面的工作，而为了放纵的快乐成为一名同性恋巫师。

你们看，就算你们以后回忆起我的演讲时只能记得这个“同性恋巫师”的笑话，我仍然会觉得自己比baroness mary warnock成功。

取得个人成功的第一步——给自己一个可以达到的目标。

实际上，为了想出合适的话题，我把自己弄得心力交瘁。

我问过我自己：“我希望我毕业的时候知道什么？”在这毕业之后的二十一年里，我又学到了那些宝贵的知识呢？我有两个答案。

在这个美好的日子里，在我们欢聚在一起庆祝你们取得的学术上的成就的时候，我决定要告诉你们失败的好处。

同时，因为你们已经站在了“现实”的门槛上，我打算赞美一下想象力的至关重要性。

这两个选择看起来奇怪而又相互矛盾，但请耐心地听我说完。

回头看刚毕业的21岁的我，让今天已经42岁的我感到一些不舒服。

21岁，我的生命到现在为止的前一半的时候，我努力地试图在自己的野心和家人的期望之间取得一个平衡。

我一直坚定地相信，我唯一想做的事情，就是写作。

但是我的父母，出生于贫寒家庭，从未上过大学，他们把我过于活跃的想象力看作一种只属于个人的怪癖，既不能用来偿还抵押贷款，又不能用来领福利救济。

JK罗琳在哈佛毕业典礼的演讲《哈利.波特》的作者罗琳于6月5日参加了哈佛大学2008年的毕业典礼，被授予荣誉学位，并作为特邀嘉宾做了标题为《The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination》（失败的额外收益与想象力的重要性）的演讲。

以下，是译言的翻译。

标题：《失败的额外收益与想象力的重要性》（原文）作者：J.K.罗琳浮士德主席，哈佛公司和监察委员会的各位成员，大学的员工，自豪的父母，以及所有的毕业生们：首先我想说的是“谢谢你们”。

这不仅因为哈佛给了我非比寻常的荣誉，而且为了这几个礼拜以来，由于想到这次毕业典礼演说而产生的恐惧与恶心让我减肥成功。

这真是一个双赢的局面！现在我需要做的就是一次深呼吸，眯着眼看着红色的横幅，然后欺骗自己，让自己相信正在参加世界上受到最好教育群体的哈立波特大会。

做毕业典礼演说是一个重大的责任，我的思绪回到了自己的那次毕业典礼。

那天的演讲者是一位英国的杰出哲学家Baroness Marry Warnock. 对她演讲的回忆对我写这篇演讲稿帮助巨大，因为我发现她说的话我居然一个字都没有记住。

这个发现让我释然，使我得以继续写完演讲稿，我不用再担心，那种想成为"gay wizard"（harry porter中的魔法大师）的眩晕的愉悦，可能会误导你们放弃在商业、法律、政治领域的大好前途。

你们看，如果你们在若干年后能记住“gay wizard”这个笑话，我就比Barkoness Mary Warnock有进步了。

所以，设定一个可以实现的目标是个人进步的第一步。

实际上，我已经绞尽脑汁、费劲心思去想今天我应该讲什么好。

我问自己：我希望在自己毕业那天已经知道的是什么，而又有哪些重要的教训是我从那天开始到现在的21年间学会的。

我想到了两个答案。

在今天这个愉快的日子，我们聚在一起庆祝你们学习上的成功时，我决定和你们谈谈失败的收益。

jk罗琳在哈佛毕业典礼演讲（中英文）resident Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,致Faust校长，哈佛集团以及哈佛监事委员会的各位成员，各位教职员工，众多自豪的家长，以及最为重要的——各位毕业生们：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 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.我想要说的第一句话是“谢谢你们”。

这份感谢不仅来自于哈佛赋予我如此非同寻常的荣誉，更是由于几个星期以来每当我想到今天的致词就会觉得头晕恶心，因而终于成功的减肥了。

这就是“双赢”啊!现在，我只需要深呼吸几次，瞄几眼红色的横幅，然后装模作样的让自己相信，我正身处世界上受过最好教育的哈里波特迷的盛大集会之中。

Delivering a commencement address is a greatresponsibility; 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.毕业典礼上致词意味着极大的责任——我这样想着，直到我开始回想我自己的毕业典礼。

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。

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。

JK罗琳2008哈佛毕业典礼演讲稿（英文）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 empathize 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 Greekauthor 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 a re 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 l ife. 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 notto sue me when I’ve used th eir 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:。

The Fringe Ben efits of Failure, and the Importa nee of Imag in ati on Harvard Uni versity Comme nceme nt Address .Rowli ng Tercentenary Theatre, June 5, 2008 失败的好处和想象力的重要性哈佛大学毕业典礼 .罗琳2008年6月5日 Preside nt Faust, members of the Harvard Corporati on and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud pare nts, 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 extraordinaryhonour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I ' ve endured at the thought of giving this commencementaddress have made me lose weight. A win-win situati on! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world 首先请允许我说一声谢谢。

哈佛不仅给了我无上的荣誉， 这真是一个双赢的局面。

现在我要做的就是深呼吸几下， 大的魔法学院聚会上。

罗琳哈佛毕业典礼演讲尊敬的校长、教授和各位同学们：大家好！首先非常感谢哈佛大学给予我这次难得的演讲机会。

站在这里，我感到十分荣幸，也深感责任重大。

今天，我想与大家分享一些我在经历中获得的人生智慧和价值观。

让我先向大家问一个问题：你们对成功的定义是什么？是金钱？是地位？还是名望？这些确实是我们生活中不可忽视的方面，但我想告诉大家，成功并不仅仅局限于这些表面的成就。

我相信，成功的定义需要是一个多维度的观念。

首先，成功必须是有意义的。

不能仅仅为了金钱而努力，而是要追求那些让自己和他人都受益的事物。

比如，通过创新和创造来改变社会，通过服务和奉献来帮助他人。

只有这样，我们才能真正达到内心的满足和成就感。

其次，成功需要是全面的。

我们不能只关注某个方面的成功，而忽略其他方面的发展。

例如，光有财富而没有健康，又有何意义呢？或许在追逐成功的过程中，我们会忽略一些重要的东西，比如家庭、友情、健康等等。

我们必须找到一个平衡，做到全面发展，才能真正的成功。

最后，成功需要是可持续的。

成功不是一蹴而就的，也不是短期的获得。

成功是一个漫长的过程，需要我们持之以恒地努力和坚持。

成功不仅是达到目标，还需要保持和发展。

只有持之以恒，才能使我们的努力和付出变得有意义和有价值。

那么，如何追求成功呢？首先，我们要有一个明确的目标。

目标是成功的起点，是我们努力的方向。

我们必须清晰地知道自己要追求什么，然后制定相应的计划和策略来实现目标。

其次，我们要不断地学习和成长。

成功是基于我们的能力和知识的。

我们要时刻保持好奇心，勇于尝试新的事物，不断学习和掌握新的知识和技能。

只有这样，我们才能适应和应对不断变化的环境和挑战。

最后，我们要有坚强的意志力和毅力。

成功是一个充满困难和挑战的过程。

我们需要克服困难、抵御诱惑，坚持不懈地向目标努力。

不要害怕失败，因为失败是成功的前奏，是我们积累经验和成长的机会。

只要我们坚持下去，相信自己，成功就在不远处。

在结束我演讲之前，我想给大家分享一句话：成功是一种心态，不是目标。

[精华版]JK罗琳Rolling的2008演讲稿（中英文对照）JK罗琳2008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,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 end ured 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(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 thatI 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。

jk罗琳哈佛演讲稿福斯特主席，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 o nly has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour,but the we eks of fear and nausea I’ve endured at the thought of givi ng this commencement address have made me lose weight.A win -win situation!Now all I have to do is take deep breaths,sq uint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at th e 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《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 responsibi lity;or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own gr aduation.The commencement speaker that day was the distingu ished 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 sh e said.This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to ab andon 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。

jk罗琳在哈佛毕业典礼演讲（中英文）jk罗琳在哈佛毕业典礼演讲（中英文）的人类的邪恶加诸于同胞的证据，这样的罪恶仅仅是为了获得或者维持权力。

我开始做恶梦，彻头彻尾的恶梦，梦到那些我看到、听到和读到的事情。

然而，在国际特赦组织里我还了解了很多关于人类的好的一面，有些是我从不知道的。

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 fortably 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 wilfullyunimaginative see more monsters. They are often moreafraid.What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever mitting an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.际特赦组织调动了几千人，他们从未因自己的信念而被折磨或监禁，他们代表那些饱受折磨的人并为之行事。

2008年JK罗琳：哈佛毕业典礼演讲（中英文对照）第一篇：2008年JK罗琳：哈佛毕业典礼演讲(中英文对照) 2008年JK罗琳哈佛毕业典礼演讲（中英文对照）默认分类 2009-07-17 20:13 阅读1281 评论0字号：大中小“2008年6月5日是哈佛大学的毕业典礼，请来的演讲嘉宾是《哈利波特》的作者J.K.罗琳女士。

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）。

我读了一遍讲稿，觉得很好，很感染人。

她几乎没有谈到哈里波特，而是说了年轻时的一些经历。

虽然J·K·罗琳现在很有钱，是英国仅次于女皇的最富有的女人，但是她曾经有一段非常艰辛的日子，30岁了，还差点流落街头。

她主要谈的是，自己从这段经历中学到的东西。

” 以下是英文文稿和中文翻译： T ext as delivered follows.Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008 President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parent s, 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 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.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 turnsout 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.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 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.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 may 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 would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil,now.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.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.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 beenthe 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 highhave you already flown.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 that 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 then 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 thanwhat 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.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 trulyabove the price of 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 than any qualificationI ever earned.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 itsvicissitudes.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 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 at the African 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 speak against their governments.Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what hadhappened 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 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 back 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 had to give 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 andsecurity 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 mylife.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 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 leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters.They are oftenmore afraid.What is more, those who choose not to empathise 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 chan ge outer reality.That is an astonishing statement and yetproven 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 change.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, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took 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 ifany of us ran for Prime Minister.So today, I 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.福斯特主席、哈佛同仁和监察委员会的各位员工，各位老师，家长、同学们:首先请允许我说一声谢谢。

J·K·罗琳在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲《失败的好处和想象的重要性》(The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination)。

她几乎没有谈到哈里波特,而是说了年轻时的一些经历。

虽然J·K·罗琳现在很有钱,是英国仅次于女皇的最富有的女人,但是她曾经有一段非常艰辛的日子,30岁了,还差点流落街头。

她主要谈的是,自己从这段经历中学到的东西。

二、她首先回忆了自己大学毕业的情景: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.当时,我只想去写小说。

但是,我的父母出身贫寒,没有受过大学教育。

他们认为,我那些不安分的想象力只是一种怪癖,根本不能用来还房贷,或者挣来养老金。

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.他们希望我再去读个专业学位,而我想去攻读英国文学。

J.Kxx20xx年哈佛大学毕业典礼演讲——《哈利.波特》作者J.K罗琳JK罗琳哈佛大学演讲(中英文)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：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）。

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。

J.Kxx20xx年哈佛大学毕业典礼演讲——《哈利.波特》作者J.K罗琳JK罗琳哈佛大学演讲(中英文)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：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）。

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。

哈利．波特老妈在哈佛毕业典礼上的演讲作者：王灿海来源：《课外阅读》2008年第18期《哈利·波特》的作者J.K.罗琳于6月5日参加了哈佛大学2008年的毕业典礼，被授予荣誉学位，并作为特邀嘉宾做了题为“失败的额外收益与想象力的重要性”的演讲——首先我想说的是“谢谢你们”。

这不仅因为哈佛给了我非比寻常的荣誉，而且为了这几个星期以来，由于想到这次毕业典礼演说而产生的恐惧让我减肥成功。

这真是一个双赢的局面!现在我需要做的就是二次深呼吸，眯着眼看着红色的横幅，然后欺骗自己，让自己相信正在参加世界上受到最好教育的群体的哈利·波特大会。

实际上，我已经绞尽脑汁、费劲心思去想今天我应该讲什么好。

我问自己：我希望在自己毕业那天已经知道的是什么，而又有哪些重要的教训是我从那天开始到现在的21年间学会的?于是我决定，在今天这个愉快的日子，我们聚在一起庆祝你们学习上的成功时，我来和你们谈谈失败的收益。

对于我这个42岁的人来说，回头看自己21岁毕业时的情景，并不是一件舒服的事。

我的前半生，一直在自己内心的追求与父母对我的要求之间进行抗争。

我曾确信我自己唯一想做的事是写小说。

但是我的父母都来自贫穷的家庭，都没有上过大学，他们认为我的异常活跃的想象力只是滑稽的个人怪癖，并不能用来付抵押房产，或者确保得到退休金。

他们希望我再去读个专业学位，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：我改学外语。

可是等到父母一走开，我立刻报名学习古典文学。

我想说明，我并没有因为他们的观点而抱怨他们。

他们希望我能摆脱贫穷。

对于他们认为贫穷并不高尚的观点我坚决同意。

贫穷会引起恐惧、压力、沮丧。

通过自己的努力摆脱贫穷确实是件很值得自豪的事。

但我在你们这个年龄的时候，最害怕的不是贫穷：而是失败。

尽管我明显缺乏在大学学习的动力，我花了很多时间在咖啡吧写故事，很少去听课，但是我知道通过考试的技巧。

这也是好多年来评价我以及我同龄人是否成功的标准。