比尔·盖茨在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲

比尔·盖茨在哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲

2007年6月7日

阮一峰 译

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President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members
of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty,
parents, and especially, the graduates:

尊敬的Bok校长，Rudenstine前校长，即将上任的Faust校长，哈佛集团的各位成员，监管
理事会的各位理事，各位老师，各位家长，各位同学：

I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "Dad, I always told you I'd
come back and get my degree."

有一句话我等了三十年，现在终于可以说了：“老爸，我总是跟你说，我会回来拿到我的
学位的！”

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I'll be changing my job next ye
ar … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

我要感谢哈佛大学在这个时候给我这个荣誉。明年，我就要换工作了（注：指从微软公司
退休）……我终于可以在简历上写我有一个本科学位，这真是不错啊。

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degr
ees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard's mos
t successful dropout." I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special c
lass … I did the best of everyone who failed.

我为今天在座的各位同学感到高兴，你们拿到学位可比我简单多了。哈佛的校报称我是“
哈佛大学历史上最成功的辍学生”。我想这大概使我有资格代表我这一类学生发言……在
所有的失败者里，我做得最好。

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out
of business school. I'm a bad influence. That's why I was invited to speak at
your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be he
re today.

但是，我还要提醒大家，我使得Steve Ballmer（注：微软总经理）也从哈佛商学院退学了
。因此，我是个有着恶劣影响力的人。这就是为什么我被邀请来在你们的毕业典礼上演讲
。如果我在你们入学欢迎仪式上演讲，那么能够坚持到今天在这里毕业的人也许会少得多
吧。

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating
. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn't even signed up for. And dorm li
fe was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always
lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyo
ne knew I didn't worry about getting up in the morning. That's how I came to b
e the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of vali
dating our rejection of all those social people.

对我来说，哈佛的求学经历是一段非凡的经历。校园生活很有趣，我常去旁听我没选修的
课。哈佛的课外生活也很棒，我在Radcliffe过着逍遥自在的日子。每天我的寝室里总有很
多人一直待到半夜，讨论着各种事情。因为每个人都知道我从不考虑第二天早起。这使得
我变成了校园里那些不安分学生的头头，我们互相粘在一起，做出一种拒绝所有正常学生
的姿态。

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most
of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds
, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improvi
ng your odds doesn't guarantee success.

Radcliffe是个过日子的好地方。那里的女生比男生多，而且大多数男生都是理工科的。这
种状况为我创造了最好的机会，如果你们明白我的意思。可惜的是，我正是在这里学到了
人生中悲伤的一课：机会大，并不等于你就会成功。

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call
from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the worl
d's first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

我在哈佛最难忘的回忆之一，发生在1975年1月。那时，我从宿舍楼里给位于Albuquerque
的一家公司打了一个电话，那家公司已经在着手制造世界上第一台个人电脑。我提出想向
他们出售软件。

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up o
n me. Instead they said: "We're not quite ready, come see us in a month," whic
h was a good thing, because we hadn't written the software yet. From that mome
nt, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the
end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Mi
crosoft.

我很担心，他们会发觉我是一个住在宿舍的学生，从而挂断电话。但是他们却说：“我们
还没准备好，一个月后你再来找我们吧。”这是个好消息，因为那时软件还根本没有写出
来呢。就是从那个时候起，我日以继夜地在这个小小的课外项目上工作，这导致了我学生
生活的结束，以及通往微软公司的不平凡的旅程的开始。

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much ener
gy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even di
scouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though
I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made
, and the ideas I worked on.

不管怎样，我对哈佛的回忆主要都与充沛的精力和智力活动有关。哈佛的生活令人愉快，
也令人感到有压力，有时甚至会感到泄气，但永远充满了挑战性。生活在哈佛是一种吸引
人的特殊待遇……虽然我离开得比较早，但是我在这里的经历、在这里结识的朋友、在这
里发展起来的一些想法，永远地改变了我。

But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.

但是，如果现在严肃地回忆起来，我确实有一个真正的遗憾。

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world –
the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn
millions of people to lives of despair.

我离开哈佛的时候，根本没有意识到这个世界是多么的不平等。人类在健康、财富和机遇
上的不平等大得可怕，它们使得无数的人们被迫生活在绝望之中。

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I g
ot great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

我在哈佛学到了很多经济学和政治学的新思想。我也了解了很多科学上的新进展。

But humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how thos
e discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, stron
g public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – redu
cing inequity is the highest human achievement.

但是，人类最大的进步并不来自于这些发现，而是来自于那些有助于减少人类不平等的发
现。不管通过何种手段——民主制度、健全的公共教育体系、高质量的医疗保健、还是广
泛的经济机会——减少不平等始终是人类最大的成就。

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of
educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the
millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing cou
ntries.

我离开校园的时候，根本不知道在这个国家里，有几百万的年轻人无法获得接受教育的机
会。我也不知道，发展中国家里有无数的人们生活在无法形容的贫穷和疾病之中。

It took me decades to find out.

我花了几十年才明白了这些事情。

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the wor
ld's inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope
you've had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technolo
gy – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.

在座的各位同学，你们是在与我不同的时代来到哈佛的。你们比以前的学生，更多地了解
世界是怎样的不平等。在你们的哈佛求学过程中，我希望你们已经思考过一个问题，那就
是在这个新技术加速发展的时代，我们怎样最终应对这种不平等，以及我们怎样来解决这
个问题。

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and
a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that tim
e and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving li
ves. Where would you spend it?

为了讨论的方便，请想象一下，假如你每个星期可以捐献一些时间、每个月可以捐献一些
钱——你希望这些时间和金钱，可以用到对拯救生命和改善人类生活有最大作用的地方。
你会选择什么地方？

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good
for the greatest number with the resources we have.

对Melinda（注：盖茨的妻子）和我来说，这也是我们面临的问题：我们如何能将我们拥有
的资源发挥出最大的作用。

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about t
he millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from disea
ses that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneu
monia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotav
irus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United
States.

在讨论过程中，Melinda和我读到了一篇文章，里面说在那些贫穷的国家，每年有数百万的
儿童死于那些在美国早已不成问题的疾病。麻疹、疟疾、肺炎、乙型肝炎、黄热病、还有
一种以前我从未听说过的轮状病毒，这些疾病每年导致50万儿童死亡，但是在美国一例死
亡病例也没有。

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying a
nd they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and del
iver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there wer
e interventions that could save lives that just weren't being delivered.

我们被震惊了。我们想，如果几百万儿童正在死亡线上挣扎，而且他们是可以被挽救的，
那么世界理应将用药物拯救他们作为头等大事。但是事实并非如此。那些价格还不到一美
元的救命的药剂，并没有送到他们的手中。

If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting to learn that s
ome lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: "
This can't be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our g
iving."

如果你相信每个生命都是平等的，那么当你发现某些生命被挽救了，而另一些生命被放弃
了，你会感到无法接受。我们对自己说：“事情不可能如此。如果这是真的，那么它理应
是我们努力的头等大事。”

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: "Ho
w could the world let these children die?"

所以，我们用任何人都会想到的方式开始工作。我们问：“这个世界怎么可以眼睁睁看着
这些孩子死去？”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of
these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died be
cause their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice
in the system.

答案很简单，也很令人难堪。在市场经济中，拯救儿童是一项没有利润的工作，政府也不
会提供补助。这些儿童之所以会死亡，是因为他们的父母在经济上没有实力，在政治上没
有能力发出声音。

But you and I have both.

但是，你们和我在经济上有实力，在政治上能够发出声音。

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more cr
eative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more
people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are s
uffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the w
orld to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the peo
ple who pay the taxes.

我们可以让市场更好地为穷人服务，如果我们能够设计出一种更有创新性的资本主义制度
——如果我们可以改变市场，让更多的人可以获得利润，或者至少可以维持生活——那么
，这就可以帮到那些正在极端不平等的状况中受苦的人们。我们还可以向全世界的政府施
压，要求他们将纳税人的钱，花到更符合纳税人价值观的地方。

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generat
e profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustain
able way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can neve
r be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the
world.

如果我们能够找到这样一种方法，既可以帮到穷人，又可以为商人带来利润，为政治家带
来选票，那么我们就找到了一种减少世界性不平等的可持续的发展道路。这个任务是无限
的。它不可能被完全完成，但是任何自觉地解决这个问题的尝试，都将会改变这个世界。


I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is
no hope. They say: "Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will b
e with us till the end – because people just … don't … care." I completely
disagree.

在这个问题上，我是乐观的。但是，我也遇到过那些感到绝望的怀疑主义者。他们说：“
不平等从人类诞生的第一天就存在，到人类灭亡的最后一天也将存在。——因为人类对这
个问题根本不在乎。”我完全不能同意这种观点。

I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

我相信，问题不是我们不在乎，而是我们不知道怎么做。

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies
that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn't care,
but because we didn't know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would h
ave acted.

此刻在这个院子里的所有人，生命中总有这样或那样的时刻，目睹人类的悲剧，感到万分
伤心。但是我们什么也没做，并非我们无动于衷，而是因为我们不知道做什么和怎么做。
如果我们知道如何做是有效的，那么我们就会采取行动。

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

改变世界的阻碍，并非人类的冷漠，而是世界实在太复杂。

To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see
the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

为了将关心转变为行动，我们需要找到问题，发现解决办法的方法，评估后果。但是世界
的复杂性使得所有这些步骤都难于做到。

Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex e
nterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, o
fficials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, det
ermine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

即使有了互联网和24小时直播的新闻台，让人们真正发现问题所在，仍然十分困难。当一
架飞机坠毁了，官员们会立刻召开新闻发布会，他们承诺进行调查、找到原因、防止将来
再次发生类似事故。

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: "Of all the people
in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent o
f them were on this plane. We're determined to do everything possible to solve
the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent."

但是如果那些官员敢说真话，他们就会说：“在今天这一天，全世界所有可以避免的死亡
之中，只有0.5%的死者来自于这次空难。我们决心尽一切努力，调查这个0.5%的死亡原因
。”

The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable dea
ths.

显然，更重要的问题不是这次空难，而是其他几百万可以预防的死亡事件。

We don't read much about these deaths. The media covers what's new – and mill
ions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it's
easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it's difficult
to keep our eyes on the problem. It's hard to look at suffering if the situat
ion is so complex that we don't know how to help. And so we look away.

我们并没有很多机会了解那些死亡事件。媒体总是报告新闻，几百万人将要死去并非新闻
。如果没有人报道，那么这些事件就很容易被忽视。另一方面，即使我们确实目睹了事件
本身或者看到了相关报道，我们也很难持续关注这些事件。看着他人受苦是令人痛苦的，
何况问题又如此复杂，我们根本不知道如何去帮助他人。所以我们会将脸转过去。

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second
step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

就算我们真正发现了问题所在，也不过是迈出了第一步，接着还有第二步：那就是从复杂
的事件中找到解决办法。

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If w
e have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks "Ho
w can I help?," then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of th
e caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path o
f action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to
matter.

如果我们要让关心落到实处，我们就必须找到解决办法。如果我们有一个清晰的和可靠的
答案，那么当任何组织和个人发出疑问“如何我能提供帮助”的时候，我们就能采取行动
。我们就能够保证不浪费一丁点全世界人类对他人的关心。但是，世界的复杂性使得很难
找到对全世界每一个有爱心的人都有效的行动方法，因此人类对他人的关心往往很难产生
实际效果。

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable st
ages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal
technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest applicat
ion of the technology that you already have — whether it's something sophisti
cated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

从这个复杂的世界中找到解决办法，可以分为四个步骤：确定目标，找到最高效的方法，
发现适用于这个方法的新技术，同时最聪明地利用现有的技术，不管它是复杂的药物，还
是最简单的蚊帐。

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the
disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology wou
ld be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So government
s, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is li
kely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what
we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting pe
ople to avoid risky behavior.

艾滋病就是一个例子。总的目标，毫无疑问是消灭这种疾病。最高效的方法是预防。最理
想的技术是发明一种疫苗，只要注射一次，就可以终生免疫。所以，政府、制药公司、基
金会应该资助疫苗研究。但是，这样研究工作很可能十年之内都无法完成。因此，与此同
时，我们必须使用现有的技术，目前最有效的预防方法就是设法让人们避免那些危险的行
为。

Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The
crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we di
d with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender t
o complexity and quit.

要实现这个新的目标，又可以采用新的四步循环。这是一种模式。关键的东西是永远不要
停止思考和行动。我们千万不能再犯上个世纪在疟疾和肺结核上犯过的错误，那时我们因
为它们太复杂，而放弃了采取行动。

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to me
asure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that ot
hers learn from your efforts.

在发现问题和找到解决方法之后，就是最后一步——评估工作结果，将你的成功经验或者
失败经验传播出去，这样其他人就可以从你的努力中有所收获。

You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a
program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a
decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential
not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from b
usiness and government.

当然，你必须有一些统计数字。你必须让他人知道，你的项目为几百万儿童新接种了疫苗
。你也必须让他人知道，儿童死亡人数下降了多少。这些都是很关键的，不仅有利于改善
项目效果，也有利于从商界和政府得到更多的帮助。

But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than n
umbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel
what saving a life means to the families affected.

但是，这些还不够，如果你想激励其他人参加你的项目，你就必须拿出更多的统计数字；
你必须展示你的项目的人性因素，这样其他人就会感到拯救一个生命，对那些处在困境中
的家庭到底意味着什么。

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel
that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the th
rill of saving just one person's life – then multiply that by millions. … Ye
t this was the most boring panel I've ever been on – ever. So boring even I c
ouldn't bear it.

几年前，我去瑞士达沃斯旁听一个全球健康问题论坛，会议的内容有关于如何拯救几百万
条生命。天哪，是几百万！想一想吧，拯救一个人的生命已经让人何等激动，现在你要把
这种激动再乘上几百万倍……但是，不幸的是，这是我参加过的最最乏味的论坛，乏味到
我无法强迫自己听下去。

What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an
event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we
had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited
about software – but why can't we generate even more excitement for saving l
ives?

那次经历之所以让我难忘，是因为之前我们刚刚发布了一个软件的第13个版本，我们让观
众激动得跳了起来，喊出了声。我喜欢人们因为软件而感到激动，那么我们为什么不能够
让人们因为能够拯救生命而感到更加激动呢？

You can't get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact.
And how you do that – is a complex question.

除非你能够让人们看到或者感受到行动的影响力，否则你无法让人们激动。如何做到这一
点，并不是一件简单的事。

Still, I'm optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new too
ls we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are n
ew – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that's why the futur
e can be different from the past.

同前面一样，在这个问题上，我依然是乐观的。不错，人类的不平等有史以来一直存在，
但是那些能够化繁为简的新工具，却是最近才出现的。这些新工具可以帮助我们，将人类
的同情心发挥最大的作用，这就是为什么将来同过去是不一样的。

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the compute
r, the Internet – give us a chance we've never had before to end extreme pove
rty and end death from preventable disease.

这个时代无时无刻不在涌现出新的革新——生物技术，计算机，互联网——它们给了我们
一个从未有过的机会，去终结那些极端的贫穷和非恶性疾病的死亡。

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a pla
n to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: "I think one difficulty i
s that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of fa
cts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult f
or the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is
virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance o
f the situation."

六十年前，乔治·马歇尔也是在这个地方的毕业典礼上，宣布了一个计划，帮助那些欧洲
国家的战后建设。他说：“我认为，困难的一点是这个问题太复杂，报纸和电台向公众源
源不断地提供各种事实，使得大街上的普通人极端难于清晰地判断形势。事实上，经过层
层传播，想要真正地把握形势，是根本不可能的。”

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me
, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more v
isible, less distant.

马歇尔发表这个演讲之后的三十年，我那一届学生毕业，当然我不在其中。那时，新技术
刚刚开始萌芽，它们将使得这个世界变得更小、更开放、更容易看到、距离更近。

The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network t
hat has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.

低成本的个人电脑的出现，使得一个强大的互联网有机会诞生，它为学习和交流提供了巨
大的机会。

The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance an
d makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of b
rilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that sc
ales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.

网络的神奇之处，不仅仅是它缩短了物理距离，使得天涯若比邻。它还极大地增加了怀有
共同想法的人们聚集在一起的机会，我们可以为了解决同一个问题，一起共同工作。这就
大大加快了革新的进程，发展速度简直快得让人震惊。

At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technol
ogy, five people don't. That means many creative minds are left out of this di
scussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience w
ho don't have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas t
o the world.

与此同时，世界上有条件上网的人，只是全部人口的六分之一。这意味着，还有许多具有
创造性的人们，没有加入到我们的讨论中来。那些有着实际的操作经验和相关经历的聪明
人，却没有技术来帮助他们，将他们的天赋或者想法与全世界分享。

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because
these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one
another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but f
or universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to
see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to addre
ss the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.


我们需要尽可能地让更多的人有机会使用新技术，因为这些新技术正在引发一场革命，人
类将因此可以互相帮助。新技术正在创造一种可能，不仅是政府，还包括大学、公司、小
机构、甚至个人，能够发现问题所在、能够找到解决办法、能够评估他们努力的效果，去
改变那些马歇尔六十年前就说到过的问题——饥饿、贫穷和绝望。

Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collection
s of intellectual talent in the world.

哈佛是一个大家庭。这个院子里在场的人们，是全世界最有智力的人类群体之一。

What for?

我们可以做些什么？

There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benef
actors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here an
d around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to
improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?

毫无疑问，哈佛的老师、校友、学生和资助者，已经用他们的能力改善了全世界各地人们
的生活。但是，我们还能够再做什么呢？有没有可能，哈佛的人们可以将他们的智慧，用
来帮助那些甚至从来没有听到过“哈佛”这个名字的人？

Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual lead
ers here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum,
and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:

请允许我向各位院长和教授，提出一个请求——你们是哈佛的智力领袖，当你们雇用新的
老师、授予终身教职、评估课程、决定学位颁发标准的时候，请问你们自己如下的问题：


Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?

我们最优秀的人才是否在致力于解决我们最大的问题？

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world's worst inequities?
Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevale
nce of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of sch
ool … the children who die from diseases we can cure?

哈佛是否鼓励她的老师去研究解决世界上最严重的不平等？哈佛的学生是否从全球那些极
端的贫穷中学到了什么……世界性的饥荒……清洁的水资源的缺乏……无法上学的女童…
…死于非恶性疾病的儿童……哈佛的学生有没有从中学到东西？

Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's
least privileged?

那些世界上过着最优越生活的人们，有没有从那些最困难的人们身上学到东西？

These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.

这些问题并非语言上的修辞。你必须用自己的行动来回答它们。

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stop
ped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hoste
d a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had
written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she s
aw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter
she said: "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."

我的母亲在我被哈佛大学录取的那一天，曾经感到非常骄傲。她从没有停止督促我，去为
他人做更多的事情。在我结婚的前几天，她主持了一个新娘进我家的仪式。在这个仪式上
，她高声朗读了一封关于婚姻的信，这是她写给Melinda的。那时，我的母亲已经因为癌症
病入膏肓，但是她还是认为这是又一个传播她的信念的机会。在那封信的结尾，她写道：
“对于那些接受了许多帮助的人们，他们还在期待更多的帮助。你的能力越大，人们对你
的期望也就越大。”

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in tal
ent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world
has a right to expect from us.

想一想吧，我们在这个院子里的这些人，被给予过什么——天赋、特权、机遇——那么可
以这样说，全世界的人们几乎有无限的权力，期待我们做出贡献。

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates h
ere to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a sp
ecialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenome
nal. But you don't have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every we
ek, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others
with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.


同这个时代的期望一样，我也要向今天各位毕业的同学提出一个忠告：你们要选择一个问
题，一个复杂的问题，一个有关于人类深刻的不平等的问题，然后你们要变成这个问题的
专家。如果你们能够使得这个问题成为你们职业的核心，那么你们就会非常杰出。但是，
你们不必一定要去做那些大事。每个星期只用几个小时，你就可以通过互联网得到信息，
找到志同道合的朋友，发现困难所在，找到解决它们的途径。

Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It wi
ll be one of the great experiences of your lives.

不要让这个世界的复杂性阻碍你前进。要成为一个行动主义者。将解决人类的不平等视为
己任。它将成为你生命中最重要的经历之一。

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you
have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of glob
al inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also h
ave an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people w
hose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had
; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

在座的各位毕业的同学，你们所处的时代是一个神奇的时代。当你们离开哈佛的时候，你
们拥有的技术，是我们那一届学生所没有的。你们已经了解到了世界上的不平等，我们那
时还不知道这些。有了这样的了解之后，要是你再弃那些你可以帮助的人们于不顾，就将
受到良心的谴责，只需一点小小的努力，你就可以改变那些人们的生活。你们比我们拥有
更大的能力；你们必须尽早开始，尽可能长时期坚持下去。

Knowing what you know, how could you not?

知道了你们所知道的一切，你们怎么可能不采取行动呢？

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on
what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yo
urselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well
you have addressed the world's deepest inequities … on how well you treated p
eople a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

我希望，30年后你们还会再回到哈佛，想起你们用自己的天赋和能力所做出的一切。我希
望，在那个时候，你们用来评价自己的标准，不仅仅是你们的专业成就，而包括你们为改
变这个世界深刻的不平等所做出的努力，以及你们如何善待那些远隔千山万水、与你们毫
不涉及的人们，你们与他们唯一的共同点就是同为人类。

Good luck.

最后，祝各位同学好运。