乔布斯 2005 年斯坦福大学毕业演讲

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乔布斯 2005 年斯坦福大学毕业演讲

英文原文 & 中文翻译逐句对照(Markdown 格式)

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每行英文后紧跟中文翻译,方便逐句对照。
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I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world.
今天能与诸位一起,参加世界最杰出大学之一的毕业典礼,我深感荣幸。

I never graduated from college.
我从未从大学毕业。

Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.
说实话,这是我离大学毕业典礼最近的一次。

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.
今天,我想向诸位讲述我生命中的三个故事。

That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
仅此而已,没什么大不了的,只是三个故事。


The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事,关于把生命中的点连接起来。

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.
我在里德学院只读了六个月就退学了,但之后我又像旁听生一样待了一年半才真正离开。

So why did I drop out?
那么,我为什么要退学?

It started before I was born.
这得从我出生前讲起。

My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.
我的生母是一位年轻的未婚研究生,她决定把我送给别人收养。

She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife.
她坚持我应该被大学毕业的人收养,于是原本一切都安排好了:一位律师和他的妻子准备在我出生时领养我。

Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.
然而,就在我呱呱坠地的那一刻,他们临时变卦,说想要一个女孩。

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?”
于是,排在候补名单上的我的养父母在一个深夜接到电话:“我们这儿有个意外出生的男孩,你们要吗?”

They said: “Of course.”
他们说:“当然要!”

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school.
后来,我的生母发现我的养母大学没毕业,养父连高中都没毕业。

She refused to sign the final adoption papers.
她拒绝在最终的收养文件上签字。

She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
几个月后,我的养父母承诺将来一定让我上大学,她才松口。

And 17 years later I did go to college.
于是,十七年后,我上了大学。

But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition.
但我天真地选了一所几乎和斯坦福一样昂贵的学校,我工薪阶层的养父母所有积蓄都用来给我交学费。

After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it.
六个月后,我看不出读下去有什么价值。

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.
我不知道自己这一生想干什么,也不知道大学能否帮我找到答案。

And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.
而此时,我正在花光他们毕生的积蓄。

So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.
于是我决定退学,并且相信一切都会好起来。

It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
当时这决定挺吓人,可如今回头看,那是我做过的最好决定之一。

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
退学的瞬间,我就不用再去上那些必修课,而可以去旁听那些看起来有意思的课程。

It wasn’t all romantic.
这并不浪漫。

I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms.
我没有宿舍,只能睡在朋友房间的地板上。

I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.
我退可乐瓶换五美分押金买吃的,每周日夜里走七英里到市区另一端的哈雷克里希纳庙吃那每周唯一一顿好饭。

I loved it.
我爱那段日子。

And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.
很多凭好奇和直觉而偶遇的东西,后来都成了无价之宝。

Let me give you one example:
举个例子:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.
里德学院当时拥有全美最棒的书法课程。

Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed.
校园里每张海报、每个抽屉的标签,都是漂亮的手写书法。

Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.
因为我退了学,不必上常规课程,我就决定去学书法,学会怎样写出那样的字。

I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.
我学到了衬线与无衬线字体,学到了怎样在不同字母组合之间调整间距,学到了是什么让印刷术如此伟大。

It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
那是一种科学无法捕捉的、美丽的、历史的、艺术细腻的学问,我深深为之着迷。

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.
当时看来,这些东西在我的人生里毫无实用价值。

But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.
然而十年后,当我们设计第一台 Macintosh 电脑时,这些记忆全都回来了。

And we designed it all into the Mac.
我们把所有这些设计进了 Mac。

It was the first computer with beautiful typography.
它是第一台拥有精美排版的电脑。

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.
如果当年大学我没有旁听那门课,Mac 绝不会拥有多种字体和等比例间距。

And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.
由于 Windows 只是照抄了 Mac,很可能今天所有个人电脑都不会有这些。

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
如果我没有退学,就不会旁听书法课,个人电脑也许就不会拥有如此美妙的排版。

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.
当然,当年在大学向前看时,这些点是不可能连起来的。

But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
但十年后再回头看,一切都极其清晰。

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
再次强调,你不可能把未来的点连起来,只能把过去的点连起来。

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
所以你必须相信,这些点终会在未来连起来。

You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
你得相信某种东西——直觉也好,命运也好,生命也好,因果也好。

Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path.
因为相信点终会连起来,才能给你信心去跟从自己的心,即使它带你离开那条寻常路。

And that will make all the difference.
而那,将造就所有不同。


My second story is about love and loss.
第二个故事,关于爱与失去。

I was lucky—I found what I loved to do early in life.
我很幸运——很早就找到了我热爱的事。

Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20.
二十岁那年,我和沃兹在我父母的车库里创办了苹果。

We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.
我们拼命工作,十年间,苹果从两个车库小子成长为拥有四千多名员工、市值二十亿美元的公司。

We had just released our finest creation—the Macintosh—a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.
就在一年前,我们推出了最杰出的作品——Macintosh,而我也刚满三十。

And then I got fired.
然后,我被炒了鱿鱼。

How can you get fired from a company you started?
你怎么会被自己创办的公司炒鱿鱼?

Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well.
随着苹果壮大,我们请来一位我认为很有天分的人和我一起经营公司,最初一年左右一切顺利。

But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling-out.
但随后我们对未来的愿景开始分歧,最终闹翻了。

When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.
当我们闹翻后,董事会站在了他那边。

So at 30 I was out.
于是,三十岁那年,我出局了。

And very publicly out.
而且是公开地出局。

What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
我成年以来整个生活的重心被夺走,那打击是毁灭性的。

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months.
有几个月,我真的不知道该怎么办。

I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down—that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.
我觉得我让上一辈企业家失望——我把他们传给我的接力棒弄掉了。

I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.
我去找戴维·帕卡德和鲍勃·诺伊斯,想为搞砸了而道歉。

I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the Valley.
我成了非常公开的失败者,甚至想过逃离硅谷。

But something slowly began to dawn on me—I still loved what I did.
但渐渐地,我意识到——我依旧热爱我所做的事。

The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit.
在苹果发生的变故丝毫没有改变这一点。

I had been rejected, but I was still in love.
我被拒绝了,可我仍然爱着它。

And so I decided to start over.
于是我决定重新开始。

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.
当时我没意识到,但后来证明,被苹果炒鱿鱼是我碰到的最好的事。

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.
成功者的沉重被重新成为初学者的轻松所取代——对一切都变得不那么确定。

It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
这让我进入了生命中最具创造力的阶段之一。

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
接下来的五年,我创办了 NeXT,创办了皮克斯,并爱上了一位了不起的女人,她后来成为我的妻子。

Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
皮克斯后来制作了世界上第一部电脑动画长片《玩具总动员》,如今成了最成功的动画工作室。

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, and I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.
在戏剧性的事件中,苹果收购了 NeXT,我回到了苹果,我们在 NeXT 开发的技术成了苹果复兴的核心。

And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
劳伦娜和我共同拥有了一个美好的家庭。

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.
我敢肯定,如果当年没被苹果开除,这一切都不会发生。

It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.
那药很苦,但病人需要它。

Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick.
有时候,生活会拿起砖头砸你的脑袋。

Don’t lose faith.
不要失去信仰。

I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
我确信,唯一让我坚持下去的就是我热爱自己所做的事。

You’ve got to find what you love.
你得去找自己所爱。

And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.
这既适用于工作,也适用于爱情。

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
工作将占据你人生很大的一部分,唯一真正获得满足的办法就是做你认为伟大的工作。

And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
而做伟大工作的唯一办法就是热爱你所做的事。

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking—and don’t settle.
如果你还没找到,继续寻找——不要将就。


My third story is about death.
第三个故事,关于死亡。

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”
十七岁那年,我读到一句话:“如果你把每一天都当作生命中的最后一天,总有一天你会是对的。”

It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself:
它深深印在我脑海,自此 33 年里,我每天早晨照镜子时都会问自己:

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
“假如今天是我生命的最后一天,我还想做我今天要做的事吗?”

And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
如果连续很多天答案都是“不”,我就知道自己需要改变。

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
“我将不久于人世”是我人生中最重要的箴言,它帮我做出生命中的重大抉择。

Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
因为几乎所有事物——所有的外部期望、所有的骄傲、所有对于尴尬或失败的恐惧——在死亡面前都会消失,只留下真正重要的东西。

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
记得你终将死去,是我所知避免“你还有东西可失去”这一陷阱的最好办法。

You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
你已经赤身裸体,没有理由不跟随自己的心。

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer.
大约一年前,我被诊断出癌症。

I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas.
早晨七点半做扫描,片子清晰地显示我胰腺上有个肿瘤。

I didn’t even know what a pancreas was.
我当时连胰腺是什么都不知道。

The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.
医生告诉我,这几乎肯定是一种无法治愈的癌症,预计我活不过三到六个月。

My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for “prepare to die.”
医生建议我回家把后事安排好,这是医生对“准备等死”的委婉说法。

It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months.
这意味着把原本打算用十年告诉孩子们的话在几个月内说完。

It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family.
意味着把一切打理好,尽量让家人轻松一些。

It means to say your goodbyes.
意味着告别。

I lived with that diagnosis all day.
那一整天,我都想着诊断结果。

Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor.
当晚我做了活检:他们把内窥镜塞进我的喉咙,穿过胃,进入肠子,把一根针扎进胰腺,从肿瘤上取了点细胞。

I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.
我被麻醉了,但我的妻子在场,她告诉我医生在显微镜下看到那些细胞后哭了,因为那是一种非常罕见、可以通过手术治愈的胰腺癌。

I had the surgery and thankfully I’m fine now.
我接受了手术,谢天谢地,现在没事了。

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades.
这是我离死亡最近的一次,我希望未来几十年都别再这么近。

Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
经历过这一切,我可以比当初“死亡只是有用但纯粹的概念”时更确定地对你们说:

No one wants to die.
没人想死。

Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.
即使是那些想去天堂的人也不想为了去那里而死去。

And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.
然而,死亡是我们所有人的共同终点,从未有人逃脱。

And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.
理当如此,因为死亡很可能是生命这一杰作中最好的发明。

It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
它是生命的变革者,它清除旧物,为新生让路。

Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
现在,新的就是你们,但不远的将来,你们也会逐渐变成旧的,被清除出去。

Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
抱歉说得这么戏剧化,但这就是事实。

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
你们的时间有限,不要把它浪费在重复别人的生活上。

Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
不要被教条所困——那意味着活在别人思考的结果里。

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.
不要让他人意见的噪音淹没你内心的声音。

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
最重要的是,有勇气跟随你的心和直觉。

They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
它们某种程度上已知道你真正想成为什么。

Everything else is secondary.
其他一切都是次要的。


When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.
我年轻时,有一本神奇的刊物叫《全球概览》,它被我们那一代人奉为圣经之一。

It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch.
它是由斯图尔特·布兰德在门洛帕克不远的地方创办的,他用诗意的笔触让它栩栩如生。

This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras.
那时是 60 年代末,个人电脑和桌面出版尚未出现,全靠打字机、剪刀和宝丽来相机完成。

It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
它有点像 35 年后才出现的谷歌的纸质版:理想主义洋溢,满是精巧工具和绝妙想法。

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue.
斯图尔特和他的团队出了几期《全球概览》,当它完成使命时,他们推出了最后一期。

It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age.
那是 70 年代中期,我正像你们这么大。

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.
最后一期的封底是一张照片:清晨的乡间小路,那种你可能冒险搭便车经过的路。

Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
照片下方写着:“求知若饥,虚心若愚。”(Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.)

It was their farewell message as they signed off.
这是他们停刊时的告别语。

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
求知若饥,虚心若愚。

And I have always wished that for myself.
我一直以此自许。

And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
现在,在你们毕业重新启程之际,我也把这句话送给你们。

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
求知若饥,虚心若愚。


Thank you all, very much.
谢谢大家。

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