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（沪江小编：以防有人没看过《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 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

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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魔法学院聚会上。

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 that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

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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.

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JK罗琳在哈佛2008毕业典礼上演讲稿

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

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：

首先请允许我说一声谢谢。哈佛

‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me 不仅给了我无上的荣誉，连日来为这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

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魔法学院聚会上。

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

is a great responsibility; or so I thought until 礼前是这么认为的。那天做演讲的是I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher

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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 honor, 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.

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.

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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。

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日期：

一、今年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。

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.

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