Now, 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.
相反，你们是哈佛毕业生的这个事实，意味着你们并不很了解失败。你们也许极其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失败。说实话，你们眼中的失败，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，毕竟你们在学业上已经达到很高的高度了。
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 high have you already flown academically.
最终，我们所有人都必须自己决定什么算做失败，但如果你愿意，世界是相当渴望给你一套标准的。所以我承认命运的公平，从任何传统的标准看，在我毕业仅仅7年后的日子里，我的失败达到了史诗般空前的规模：一段异常短暂的婚姻破裂了，我失业了，成了一个单身母亲。而且在现代的英国，我除了不是无家可归外，是要多穷有多穷。当年父母和我自己对未来的担忧，现在都发生了。按照惯常的标准来看，我也是我所知道的最失败的人。
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 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.
现在，我不打算站在这里告诉你们，失败是有趣的。那段日子是我生命中的黑暗岁月，我不知道会有后来媒体形容的那样一个童话故事的结局。我也不知道这条黑暗的隧道有多长，很长一段时间里，隧道尽头的一点光亮对我来说都只是希望，而不是现实。
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.
那么为什么我要谈论失败的好处呢？很简单，因为失败意味着剥离掉那些不必要的东西。我不再伪装自己，重新认识了自己，并开始把所有精力集中于完成唯一一件对我很重要的工作上。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我的舞台上取得成功的决心。我获得了自由，因为最担心的虽然已经发生了，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非常棒的计划。所以生活的最低点，已成为我重建生活的坚固的基础。
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. 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 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.
你们可能永远达不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，除非你生活得万般小心，而那也意味着你没有真正在生活——在这种情况下，有些失败还是注定要发生的。
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.
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，我有比自己认为的更强的意志和更多的磨炼。我还发现，我拥有比宝石更加珍贵的朋友。
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 about gem.
认识使你从挫折中获得更多的智慧、变得更坚强，这意味着从此以后你都拥有生存的能力。只有在逆境来临的时候，你才会真正认识你自己和你身边的人。这种认识是真正的财富，虽然是用痛苦换来的，但比我以前得到的任何资格证书都更有价值。
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.
如果给我一部时间机器或是一个时间转换器，我会告诉21岁的自己，个人的幸福建立在自己能够认识到生活不是一份你所获得的物品或成就的清单上。你的资格证书、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，而谦卑地了解这一点，将使你历经沧桑后能够更好地生存。
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.
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，这是一种使我们能够同情自己不曾经受他人的苦难的能力。
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.
对我影响最大的人生经历之一发生在我写《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溜走写故事，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。
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.
