This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
這是蘋果公司和Pixar動畫工作室的CEO Steve Jobs於2005年6月12號在斯坦福大學的畢業典禮上麵的演講稿。
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.
我今天很榮幸能和你們一起參加畢業典禮，斯坦福大學是世界上最好的大學之一。我從來沒有從大學中畢業。說實話,今天也許是在我的生命中離大學畢業最近的一天了。今天我想向你們講述我生活中的三個故事。不是什麽大不了的事情,隻是三個故事而已。
The first story is about connecting the dots.
第一個故事是關於如何把生命中的點點滴滴串連起來。
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Reed大學讀了六個月之後就退學了,但是在十八個月以後??我真正的作出退學決定之前,我還經常去學校。我為什麽要退學呢？
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.
故事從我出生的時候講起。我的親生母親是一個年輕的,沒有結婚的大學畢業生。她決定讓別人收養我, 她十分想讓我被大學畢業生收養。所以在我出生的時候，她已經做好了一切的準備工作，能使得我被一個律師和他的妻子所收養。但是她沒有料到,當我出生之後,律師夫婦突然決定他們想要一個女孩。 所以我的生養父母（他們還在我親生父母的觀察名單上）突然在半夜接到了一個電話:“我們現在這兒有一個不小心生出來的男嬰,你們想要他嗎？”他們回答道:“當然！”但是我親生母親隨後發現，我的養母從來沒有上過大學,我的父親甚至從沒有讀過高中。她拒絕簽這個收養合同。隻是在幾個月以後,我的父母答應她一定要讓我上大學,那個時候她才同意。
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.
在十七歲那年,我真的上了大學。但是我很愚蠢的選擇了一個幾乎和你們斯坦福大學一樣貴的學校, 我父母還處於藍領階層，他們幾乎把所有積蓄都花在了我的學費上麵。在六個月後, 我已經看不到其中的價值所在。我不知道我想要在生命中做什麽,我也不知道大學能幫助我找到怎樣的答案。 但是在這裏，我幾乎花光了我父母這一輩子的所有積蓄。所以我決定要退學,我覺得這是個正確的決定。不能否認,我當時確實非常的害怕, 但是現在回頭看看,那的確是我這一生中最棒的一個決定。在我做出退學決定的那一刻, 我終於可以不必去讀那些令我提不起絲毫興趣的課程了。然後我還可以去修那些看起來有點意思的課程。
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:
但是這並不是那麽羅曼蒂克。我失去了我的宿舍,所以我隻能在朋友房間的地板上麵睡覺,我去撿5美分的可樂瓶子，僅僅為了填飽肚子, 在星期天的晚上,我需要走七英裏的路程，穿過這個城市到Hare Krishna寺廟（注：位於紐約Brooklyn下城）,隻是為了能吃上飯??這個星期唯一一頓好一點的飯。但是我喜歡這樣。我跟著我的直覺和好奇心走, 遇到的很多東西,此後被證明是無價之寶。讓我給你們舉一個例子吧：
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.
Reed大學在那時提供也許是全美最好的美術字課程。在這個大學裏麵的每個海報, 每個抽屜的標簽上麵全都是漂亮的美術字。因為我退學了, 沒有受到正規的訓練, 所以我決定去參加這個課程，去學學怎樣寫出漂亮的美術字。我學到了san serif 和serif字體, 我學會了怎麽樣在不同的字母組合之中改變空格的長度, 還有怎麽樣才能作出最棒的印刷式樣。那是一種科學永遠不能捕捉到的、美麗的、真實的藝術精妙, 我發現那實在是太美妙了。
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, its 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.
當時看起來這些東西在我的生命中，好像都沒有什麽實際應用的可能。但是十年之後,當我們在設計第一台Macintosh電腦的時候,就不是那樣了。我把當時我學的那些家夥全都設計進了Mac。那是第一台使用了漂亮的印刷字體的電腦。如果我當時沒有退學, 就不會有機會去參加這個我感興趣的美術字課程, Mac就不會有這麽多豐富的字體，以及賞心悅目的字體間距。那麽現在個人電腦就不會有現在這麽美妙的字型了。當然我在大學的時候，還不可能把從前的點點滴滴串連起來,但是當我十年後回顧這一切的時候,真的豁然開朗了。
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.
再次說明的是,你在向前展望的時候不可能將這些片斷串連起來；你隻能在回顧的時候將點點滴滴串連起來。所以你必須相信這些片斷會在你未來的某一天串連起來。你必須要相信某些東西：你的勇氣、目的、生命、因緣。這個過程從來沒有令我失望（let me down）,隻是讓我的生命更加地與眾不同而已。
My second story is about love and loss.
我的第二個故事是關於愛和損失的。
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.
我非常幸運, 因為我在很早的時候就找到了我鍾愛的東西。Woz和我在二十歲的時候就在父母的車庫裏麵開創了蘋果公司。我們工作得很努力, 十年之後, 這個公司從那兩個車庫中的窮光蛋發展到了超過四千名的雇員、價值超過二十億的大公司。在公司成立的第九年,我們剛剛發布了最好的產品,那就是Macintosh。我也快要到三十歲了。在那一年, 我被炒了魷魚。你怎麽可能被你自己創立的公司炒了魷魚呢? 嗯,在蘋果快速成長的時候，我們雇用了一個很有天分的家夥和我一起管理這個公司, 在最初的幾年,公司運轉的很好。但是後來我們對未來的看法發生了分歧, 最終我們吵了起來。當爭吵不可開交的時候, 董事會站在了他的那一邊。所以在三十歲的時候, 我被炒了。在這麽多人的眼皮下我被炒了。在而立之年，我生命的全部支柱離自己遠去, 這真是毀滅性的打擊。
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.
在最初的幾個月裏，我真是不知道該做些什麽。我把從前的創業激情給丟了, 我覺得自己讓與我一同創業的人都很沮喪。我和David Pack和Bob Boyce見麵，並試圖向他們道歉。我把事情弄得糟糕透頂了。但是我漸漸發現了曙光, 我仍然喜愛我從事的這些東西。蘋果公司發生的這些事情絲毫的沒有改變這些, 一點也沒有。我被驅逐了,但是我仍然鍾愛它。所以我決定從頭再來。
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.
我當時沒有覺察, 但是事後證明, 從蘋果公司被炒是我這輩子發生的最棒的事情。因為，作為一個成功者的極樂感覺被作為一個創業者的輕鬆感覺所重新代替: 對任何事情都不那麽特別看重。這讓我覺得如此自由, 進入了我生命中最有創造力的一個階段。
