乔布斯2005年斯坦福毕业典礼演讲(中英对照及视频)




steve jobs stanford commencement address 2005这是2005年6月12日乔布斯在斯坦福大学第114届毕业典礼上的演讲。中文译文来自福布斯中文网

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
今天与你们一起参加世界上最好的大学之一的毕业典礼,我感到很荣幸。我从来没有从大学毕业。说实话,这是我离大学毕业典礼最近的一次。今天我想向你们讲述我生活中的三个故事。就是这样。不是什么大不了的事情。只是三个故事而已。

The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一个故事是关于把点串连成线的故事。

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
我在里德学院(Reed College)只读了六个月就退学了,但是我还经常去学校旁听,又过了大约18个月,我才真正离开校园。那么,我为什么要退学呢?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. 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. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. 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?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
这要从我出生前讲起。母亲怀上我时,她还是一名年轻的未婚在校研究生,于是她决定把我送给别人来收养。她非常强烈地希望我被上过大学的人收养,所以,我的一切都被安排好,等我一出生就由一名律师和他的妻子收养。哪知我刚一出世,这对夫妇突然改变了主意,他们真正想要的是一个女孩。这样,我的养父母——当时还列在登记的申请人名单中——突然在半夜接到了一个电话:“我们有一个不期而至的男婴,你们想要他吗?”他们回答道:“当然要。”但是我生母后来发现,我的养母并没有大学学历,而我的养父甚至没从中学毕业。她拒绝在最终的收养文件上签字。但几个月之后,我的父母承诺将来一定送我上大学,我的生母就松口了。

And 17 years later I did go to college. 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. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. 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. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. 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.
17年后,我真的上了大学。但是我很天真,选择了一所几乎和斯坦福大学一样贵的学校,我那工薪阶层的养父母把全部积蓄都用来支付我的大学学费。六个月后,我看不到上大学有什么价值。我不知道自己一生中想做什么,我也不知道大学怎样帮我找到答案。而此时,我正在花光父母一辈子攒下的钱。所以我决定退学,并且相信这是个不错的决定。在那时候,这样做多少有些心里没底,但是回过头来看,那是我至今做出的最正确的决定之一。从我退学的那一刻起,我可以不用选学那些我不感兴趣的必修课,可以去旁听那些看上去有趣的课程。

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, 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. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
那个时候并非事事如意。我没有了宿舍,因此只能睡在朋友房间的地板上;我退还可乐瓶,换回5美分押金买东西吃;每个星期天的晚上,我总是走上七英里,穿城到哈瑞·奎师那(Hare Krishna)礼拜堂去,吃上一顿每周一次的大餐。我喜欢这样。我凭着好奇心和直觉所做的大多数事情,结果被证明是无价之宝。让我给你们举一个例子:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. 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. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
那时候,里德学院开设的书法课可能是全美国最好的。校园里的所有海报、所有抽屉标签上的字都写得漂漂亮亮 。由于我已经退学,不用上常规课程,我决定选一门书法课,学学怎样写好字。我学习了serif(衬线字)和san serif(非衬线字)字体,学会了根据不同的字母组合调整间距,懂得了了不起的活版印刷之所以了不起的原因。书法课真是太美妙了,具有历史性和科学无法捕捉的艺术上的精妙,我觉得它趣味无穷。

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
这些对我的一生本应该是毫无实际用处的,可是十年后,在我们设计第一台麦金塔(Macintosh)电脑的时候,书法课上的所学全都浮现在我的脑海里。我们把它全部融入Mac电脑的设计之中。这是史上第一台拥有精美字体版式的电脑。如果我在大学时期从未旁听过那一课,Mac电脑就不会有如此丰富的字体,或是如此适当的字体间距。而且,要不是Windows电脑抄袭了Mac,那么PC机很可能就不会有这么美妙的字体。如果我没有退学,我就不会旁听书法课,而个人电脑也可能就不会拥有如此美妙的字体了。当然,当时还在大学的时候不可能从这一点看到未来,。但十年后回首往事,一切都非常非常清晰。

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
再次说明,你们不可能从现在的点看到未来,只有回首看时才能看清来龙去脉。因此,你要相信,这些点在你的未来终将连接起来。你们必须相信某种东西——你的胆识、命运、生命、业力,等等。这样做从来没有让我失望,而且还彻底改变了我的生活。

My second story is about love and loss.
我的第二个故事是关于热爱和得失。

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. 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. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? 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. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
我很幸运,因为我早早便发现了自己喜欢做什么。我在20岁的时候和沃兹(Steve Wozniak)一起在我父母的车库里开创了苹果公司。我们工作十分努力,十年里后,苹果从车库里只有我们两人发展成为一家拥有4,000多名员工、市值20亿的公司。在第九年的时候,我们刚刚发布了我们最棒的产品——麦金托什电脑,而我刚到30岁。然后我被炒了鱿鱼。你怎么能被自己创办的公司炒鱿鱼呢?是这样的,随着苹果的发展,我们聘用了一个我认为颇有才能的人来和我一起运营公司,最初的一年里,一切进展顺利。但之后我们对未来的看法开始出现了分歧,最终我们吵翻了,这时,我们的董事会站在了他那边。于是,我在30岁的时候离开了,而且弄得人人皆知。我成年后全部生活的重心不复存在,这对我是一个毁灭性的打击。

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. 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. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
有几个月我都真的不知道该做些什么。我觉得,我让创业先辈们失望了——我丢掉了传到我手上的接力棒。我去见了戴维·帕卡德(David Packard)和鲍勃·诺伊斯(Bob Noyce),试图为我把事情搞砸而道个歉。这个失败弄得满城皆知,我甚至想过逃离硅谷。但我渐渐地开始有了明确的想法——我仍然热爱我做过的一切。苹果公司发生的变故并没有丝毫改变这一点。我被驱逐了,但我仍然热爱我的事业。所以我决定重新开始。

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. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
那时候我还没有意识到,但后来事实却证明,被苹果炒鱿鱼是发生在我身上的最好的事情。我放下了已有成就的重担,取而代之的是重新创业、探索未来的轻松。这使我轻装上阵,进入了我一生中最富创造力的时期之一。

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. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
在接下来的五年之中,我创办了NeXT公司,还有皮克斯(Pixar)公司,我爱上了一位了不起的女人,她后来成为我的妻子。皮克斯公司制作了世界第一部用电脑制作的动画片《玩具总动员》,它现在是世界上最成功的动画工作室。接下来峰回路转,苹果在一个特殊的机遇下收购了NeXT,我又回到了苹果公司,我们在NeXT开发的技术是让苹果现在起死回生的核心技术。并且,劳伦(Laurence)和我共同拥有一个幸福的家庭。

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. 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. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
我十分确定,如果我没有被苹果解雇,这一切都不会发生。这是一剂苦药,但是我认为对病人有好处。有时候,生活会给你当头一棒,但是不要失去信心。我相信促使我一往无前的唯一动力就是我热爱我所做的一切。你们一定要找到你们的所爱。对爱人是如此,对工作亦如此。你的工作将占据你的大部分生活,真正令人满意的唯一办法就是做你认为伟大的工作。而做伟大的工作的唯一途径就是热爱你的工作。如果你还没有找到你喜欢做的事情,请继续寻找。不要停顿。用你全部身心去寻找,当你找到的时候你会有所感知。而且,正如任何美好的事物一样,日久弥新。因此要不断地寻找,不要放弃。不要半途而废。

My third story is about death.
我的第三个故事是关于死亡。

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.” 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: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
在我17岁的时候,我读到了一句箴言,差不多是这样的:“如果你把每一天都当作生命中的最后一天去生活的话,那么终有一天你会发现自己是正确的。”这句话给我留下了深刻的印象,从那时算起的33年以来,我每天早晨都会对着镜子问自己:“如果今天是我生命中的最后一天,我还会做自己今天即将要做的事吗?”当答案连续多次都是“不”时,我就知道自己需要做些改变了。

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. 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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
“记住你就快要死了”是我听过的最重要的箴言,它帮我做出了生命中非常重大的决策。因为几乎所有的一切——包括所有的外界期望、所有的骄傲、所有对于难堪或失败的恐惧——都会在面对死亡时化为虚无,留下真正重要的东西。你有时会想自己可能失去一些东西,“记住你就快要死了”是我知道的逃脱这种思维陷阱的最好办法。既然你已经赤身裸体了无牵挂了,你就没有理由不去遵从自己的内心。

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. 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. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
大概在一年前, 我被诊断出患有癌症。那天早晨七点半,我接受了一次扫描,结果清楚地显示我的胰腺里长了一个肿瘤。我当时都不知道胰腺是什么东西,医生们告诉我,这几乎可以确定是一种无法治愈的癌症,我的寿命估计还有三到六个月的时间。医生们建议我回家把事情都做个了结,这是医生们的行话,意思是准备后事。这意味着在接下去的几个月里你要把未来十年要对孩子们说的话提前说完,意味着你要确保把每件事都安排妥当好让家人以后的日子尽量好过,也意味着你要对这个世界说再见了。

I lived with that diagnosis all day. 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. 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. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
这个诊断一整天都萦绕在我心头,当天晚上,我做了一次活体组织切片检查:他们把一个内窥镜伸进我的喉咙,穿过我的胃一直进到肠子里,用一枚探针伸进胰脏取得了一些组织细胞。我当时被麻醉了,在场的妻子告诉我,医生们把这些细胞放到显微镜下观察之后都惊叫起来,因为他们发现这是一种非常罕见的、通过手术可以治愈的胰腺癌。后来我做了手术,现在已经康复。

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. 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:
这是我距离死亡最近的一次,我希望它也是未来几十年里我离死亡最近的一次。经历了这件事,死亡对我而言已经不再只是一种有益却仅限于纯粹想象的概念,因此我可以更加确信地跟你们谈起我对死亡的看法:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
没有人想要死,即使人们想上天堂, 他们也不会为了去那里而死,但是死亡是我们共同的终点,从来没有人能够逃脱它。而这也是合理的,因为死亡很可能是生命最好的一项发明,它是生命变化的推动者,它清除老朽而为新生代开路。现在的你们就是新生代,但是在不久之后的某天,你们就会渐渐变成老朽而被清除出人生的舞台。抱歉说得这么夸张,但是这是事实。

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
你的时间有限,别浪费生命过别人的生活。不要被教条所束缚,因为那是别人生活的目的。别让其他人的不同意见压过你自己内心的声音。最重要的是,要勇于追随自己的内心和直觉,它们其实早已知道你想要成为什么,除此以外都是次要的。

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. 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. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. 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.
当我年轻的时候,有一份非常精彩的刊物,叫做《全球概览》(Whole Earth Catalog),那是我们那一代人视为圣经的读物之一。它由斯图尔特·布兰德(Stewart Brand)在离这里不远的门洛帕克创办,他把诗意带进杂志,赋予它鲜活的生命力。那是在1960年代末,这本刊物全部由打字机、剪刀和宝丽来相机制作出来。有点像平装版的谷歌,但早于谷歌问世35年。这就是理想主义,充满着整洁的工具和伟大的奇想。

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. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. 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. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
斯图尔特和他的团队出版了几期《全球概览》之后,顺其自然地出版了最后一期。那是1970年代中期,而我正如你们这般年纪。在最后一期的封底上,是一条清晨乡间小路的照片,如果你富有冒险精神,它可能就是你要搭车的那种小路。照片下面是一行字:“求知若饥,虚心若愚”。那就是他们停刊的临别赠言。求知若饥,虚心若愚。我总是对自己抱着这样的期望。而现在,在你们毕业即将踏上新生活的一刻,我也这样祝愿你们。

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
求知若饥,虚心若愚。

Thank you all very much.
非常感谢你们。

The Whole Earth Catalog_Stay Hungry Stay Foolish






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