J·K·罗琳在哈佛高校毕业典礼上的演讲(双语)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） 她几乎没有谈到哈里波特，而是说了年轻时的一些经验虽然J·K·罗琳现在很有钱，是英国仅次于女皇的最富有的女人，但是她曾经有一段特别艰辛的日子，30岁了，还差点流落街头她主要谈的是，自己从这段经验中学到的东西 我只找到了一部分中文翻译，有爱好的挚友可以看下面的原文和视频 二、 她首先回忆了自己高校毕业的情景： 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，没有受过高校教化他们认为，我那些担心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最终，达成了一个双方都不甚满足的妥协：我改学外语可是等到父母一走开，我立即报名学习古典文学 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. 我不记得将这事告知了父母。
他们可能是在毕业典礼那一天才发觉的我想，在全世界的全部专业中，他们或许认为，不会有比探讨希腊神话更没用的专业了，根本无法换来一间独立的宽敞卫生间 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，我并不指责父母。
……他们只是希望我不要过穷日子，我不能指责他们他们自己很穷，我后来一度也很穷，所以我很理解他们，贫困是一种凄惨的经验它带来恐惊、压力、有时还有抑郁它意味着许很多多的羞辱和艰辛靠自己的努力摆脱贫困，的确让人骄傲，但是只有傻瓜才会将贫困本身浪漫化 接着，她谈到了自己那些最凄惨的日子： A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. 我毕业后只过了7年，就失败得一塌糊涂 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. *的婚姻闪电般地裂开，我还失业了，成了一个艰难的单身母亲。
除了流浪汉，我是当代英国最穷的人之一，真的一无全部我父母对我的担忧，我对自己的担忧，都变成了现实用平常人的标准，我是我所知道的最失败的人 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岁月我不知道还要在黑暗中走多久，很长一段时间中，我有的只是希望，而不是现实 但是，J.K. 罗琳认为，没有那段日子的失败，就不会有后来的她 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. 为什么我说失败是有好处的？因为失败将那些非本质的东西都剥离了。
我不再伪装自己，我找到了真正的我，我将自己全部的精力，投入完成对我最重要的一项工作 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胜利了，那么我或许恒久不会有这样的决心，投身于这个我自信真正属于我的领域 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，因为我的恐惊已经成为现实，而我却还依旧活着，依旧有一个深爱着的女儿，我还有一台旧打字机和一个大大的幻想。
我生命中最低的低点，成为我重建生活的坚实基础 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平安感，以前通过考试也没有的平安感失败让我看清自己，以前我从没相识到自己是这样的我发觉，我比自己以为的，有更强的意志和决心我还发觉，我有一些比宝石更宝贵的挚友 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. 只有到逆境来临的那一天，你才会真正了解你自己，了解你结识的人。
这种了解是真正的财宝，虽然是用苦痛换来的，但是它比我以前得到的任何证书都有用 三、我要重点谈的，是演说的结尾部分 一般来说，在演讲结束时，嘉宾将对毕业生提出期望我们可以看到，在这种场合，几乎全部嘉宾，都没有说“祝福同学们取得个人胜利”，而是说“希望同学们努力去减轻人类的苦难” 比尔·盖茨去年说： 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 gir。