奥普拉哈佛大学毕业演讲全文含译文.docx

1、奥普拉哈佛大学毕业演讲全文含译文Oh my goodness! Im at Harvard! Wow! To President Faust, my fellow honorans, Carl Muller that was so beautiful, thank you so much, and James Rothenberg, Stephanie Wilson, Harvard faculty, with a special bow to my friend Dr. Henry Lewis Gates. All of you alumni, with a special bow to t

2、he Class of 88, your hundred fifteen million dollars. And to you, members of the Harvard class of 2013! Hello! 我的天啊！我在哈.佛！真的！尊敬的Faust校长、和我一起获得荣誉学位的各位，Carl（注：Carl Muller哈佛校友会主席），真是太棒了，谢谢你们！还有James Rothenberg, Stephanie Wilson和哈佛的教职工们，特别感谢我的朋友Henry Lewis Gates博士（注：美国知名黑人教授）！感谢所有的哈佛校友，特别要感谢88届的毕业生，你们为哈

3、佛捐出一亿一千五百万美元（注：哈佛历史上最多的一次同一班次校友捐款）。所有2013届的各位毕业生们！大家好！I thank you for allowing me to be a part of the conclusion of this chapter of your lives and the commencement of your next chapter. To say that Im honored doesnt even begin to quantify the depth of gratitude that really accompanies an honorary do

4、ctorate from Harvard. Not too many little girls from rural Mississippi have made it all the way here to Cambridge. And I can tell you that I consider today as I sat on the stage this morning getting teary for you all and then teary for myself, I consider today a defining milestone in a very long and

5、 a blessed journey. My one hope today is that I can be a source of some inspiration. Im going to address my remarks to anybody who has ever felt inferior or felt disadvantaged, felt screwed by life, this is a speech for the Quad.感谢你们让我成为你们人生这一篇章的结束与下一篇章开始的纽带。对我而言，荣幸根本无法表达我内心深处对哈佛授予我荣誉学位的感激之情。不是每个来自密

6、西西比州的农村小姑娘都能来到剑桥城的（注：哈佛位于波士顿郊剑桥城）。我可以告诉你们，当我今天早上坐在这个台上，为你们和我自己流下眼泪的时候，我觉得今天是我漫长并被祝福的人生旅途中的一个里程碑。我希望今天我能为你们带来一些启发。我的演讲是为那些曾在人生中感到自卑或觉得自己没有优势，甚至觉得生活一团糟的人，这就是我给哈佛带来的演讲。Actually I was so honored I wanted to do something really special for you. I wanted to be able to have you look under your seats and th

7、ere would be free master and doctor degrees but I see you got that covered already. I will be honest with you. I felt a lot of pressure over the past few weeks to come up with something that I could share with you that you hadnt heard before because after all you all went to Harvard, I did not. But

8、then I realized that you dont have to necessarily go to Harvard to have a driven obsessive Type A personality. But it helps. And while I may not have graduated from here I admit that my personality is about as Harvard as they come. You know my television career began unexpectedly. As you heard this

9、morning I was in the Miss Fire Prevention contest. That was when I was 16 years old in Nashville, Tennessee, and you had the requirement of having to have red hair in order to win up until the year that I entered. So they were doing the question and answer period because I knew I wasnt going to win

10、under the swimsuit competition. So during the question and answer period the question came “Why, young lady, what would you like to be when you grow up?” And by the time they got to me all the good answers were gone. So I had seen Barbara Walters on the “Today Show” that morning so I answered, “I wo

11、uld like to be a journalist. I would like to tell other peoples stories in a way that makes a difference in their lives and the world.” And as those words were coming out of my mouth I went whoa! This is pretty good! I would like to be a journalist. I want to make a difference. Well I was on televis

12、ion by the time I was 19 years old. And in 1986 I launched my own television show with a relentless determination to succeed at first. I was nervous about the competition and then I became my own competition raising the bar every year, pushing, pushing, pushing myself as hard as I knew. Sound famili

13、ar to anybody here? Eventually we did make it to the top and we stayed there for 25 years.其实我真的很荣幸，因此我想为你们做些特别的事。我想要跟你们说，请看你们座位下面有免费硕士或博士学位证书，但是我发现你们已经有了。说实话，在过去的几个星期我感到很大的压力，因为我想要跟你们分享一些你们从没听到过的东西，毕竟你们都上了哈佛，而我没有。但后来我意识到其实并不是一定要上哈佛才能有一个驱动性强迫型的A型人格，当然上了哈佛还是有帮助的。虽然我没有从哈佛毕业，但我认为我的性格和哈佛的毕业生是一样。大家都知道，我的电

14、视事业生涯开始的出乎意料。正如你们早上听到的，我当时在参加“防火小姐”比赛。那年我16岁（注：奥普拉出生于1954年，今年59岁），在田纳西州的纳什维尔。在我参加比赛那年之前，想赢的话你必须得是红头发女孩。在进行问答环节时，因为我知道我在泳装比赛中不会赢，所以当问答环节问道：“年轻的女士，你长大后想做什么？为什么？”等轮到我回答的时候，好答案都被之前的参赛者说完了。因为那天早上我正好在“今日秀”中看到了芭芭拉怀特女士，所以我说：“我想成为一名新闻工作者，我想成为为人民带来一些在某种程度上能改变人民生活和改变世界的故事。”当我说出这些话时，我觉得：“哇！还挺不错的！我想做个记者，我要做出一番事业

15、。”后来，19岁时我上了电视。在1986年，我推出了我自己的电视节目，一开始就下定决心要成功。我以前对比赛很紧张，后来我和自己竞争，每年设立一个更高的目标，一步一步地推到极限。对大家来说听着挺熟悉吧？最终，我们成功达到巅峰，并在那里待了25年。The “Oprah Winfrey Show” was number one in our time slot for 21 years and I have to tell you I became pretty comfortable with that level of success. But a few years ago I decided

16、, as you will at some point, that it was time to recalculate, find new territory, break new ground. So I ended the show and launched OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network. The initials just worked out for me. So one year later after launching OWN, nearly every media outlet had proclaimed that my new ventur

17、e was a flop. Not just a flop, but a big bold flop they call it. I can still remember the day I opened up USA Today and read the headline “Oprah, not quite standing on her OWN.” I mean really,USA Today? Now thats the nice newspaper! It really was this time last year the worst period in my profession

18、al life. I was stressed and I was frustrated and quite frankly I was actually I was embarrassed. It was right around that time that President Faust called and asked me to speak here and I thought you want me to speak to Harvard graduates? What could I possibly say to Harvard graduates, some of the m

19、ost successful graduates in the world in the very moment when I had stopped succeeding? So I got off the phone with President Faust and I went to the shower. It was either that or a bag of Oreos. So I chose the shower. And I was in the shower a long time and as I was in the shower the words of an ol

20、d hymn came to me. You may not know it. Its “By and by, when the morning comes.” And I started thinking about when the morning might come because at the time I thought I was stuck in a hole. And the words came to me “Trouble dont last always” from that hymn, “this too shall pass.” And I thought as I

21、 got out of the shower I am going to turn this thing around and I will be better for it. And when I do, Im going to go to Harvard and Im going to speak the truth of it! So Im here today to tell you I have turned that network around!“奥普拉秀”在同一时间段的电视节目中连续21年排名第一，我必须说我对于这个成功非常的满足。但是几年前，我觉得，在人生的某一时刻，你必须重

22、新来过，找到新的领域，实现新的突破。所以我离开了“奥普拉秀”，以我的名字命名推出了我自己的电视网络“奥普拉温福瑞电视网”，缩写正好是“OWN（自己的）”。在奥普拉温福瑞电视网推出一年后，几乎所有的媒体都认为我的新项目是失败的。不仅仅是失败，他们称之为一个大写的失败。我还记得有一天我打开今日美国报时看到头条新闻说“ 奥普拉搞不定自己的电视网”。不是吧，今日美国报啊？真是份好报纸.这正是去年我职业生涯最低谷的时刻。我压力超大近乎崩溃，老实说，我感到羞愧。就在那个时候，Faust校长打电话邀请我到哈佛做毕业演讲。我心想：“你让我给哈佛的毕业生演讲?我能跟这些世界上最成功的毕业生说什么？而我已经不再成

23、功。”我挂了Faust校长的电话后去洗了个澡。要么去吃奥利奥要么去洗澡，我选择了洗澡。那个澡我洗了很长时间，在洗澡的时候我突然想到某首古老赞美诗中的一句话，你可能没听过“终于，清晨来临.”，之后我就想，我的黎明也许要来了。因为那时我觉得我被困在一个洞里了。我又想到那首古老赞美诗中的一句话：“困难只是暂时的，都会过去.”当我走出浴室时，我想：我遇到的麻烦同样会有结束的一天，我会将这一页翻过去，我会好起来的，等我做到了，我就去哈佛，把这个真实的故事告诉大家！今天我来了并且想告诉你们我已经把“奥普拉温福瑞电视网”带上正轨了。And it was all because I wanted to do

24、it by the time I got to speak to you all so thank you so much. You dont know what motivation you were for me, thank you. Im even prouder to share a fundamental truth that you might not have learned even as graduates of Harvard unless you studied the ancient Greek hero with Professor Nagy. Professor

25、Nagy as we were coming in this morning said, “Please Ms. Winfrey, walk decisively.”这一切都是因为我想在来哈佛之前把事情做好，所以非常感谢你们！你们不知道你们给了我多大的动力，谢谢！我甚至能更骄傲地来和各位分享一个基本的真理。作为哈佛的毕业生你也未必知道，除非你上过Nagy教授的课程知道古希腊英雄人物。在今天早上来的路上，Nagy教授说：“温福瑞女士，请坚决地向前走。”I shall walk decisively.我应该坚决地向前走。This is what I want to share. It doesnt

26、 matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if youre constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If youre constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I

27、 want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now when youre down there in the hole, it looks like failure. So this past year I had to spoon feed those words to myself. And when youre down in the hole, when that

28、 moment comes, its really okay to feel bad for a little while. Give yourself time to mourn what you think you may have lost but then heres the key, learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who yo

29、u are. And then figure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to develop an internal moral, emotional G.P.S. that can tell you which way to go. Because now and forever more when you Google yourself your search results will read “Harvard, 2013. And in a very competitive world that re

30、ally is a calling card because I can tell you as one who employs a lot of people when I see “Harvard” I sit up a little straighter and say, “Where is he or she? Bring them in.” Its an impressive calling card that can lead to even more impressive bullets in the years ahead: lawyer, senator, C.E.O., s

31、cientist, physicist, winners of Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes or late night talk show host. But the challenge of life I have found is to build a rsum that doesnt simply tell a story about what you want to be but its a story about who you want to be. Its a rsum that doesnt just tell a story about what yo

32、u want to accomplish but why. A story thats not just a collection of titles and positions but a story thats really about your purpose. Because when you inevitably stumble and find yourself stuck in a hole that is the story that will get you out. What is your true calling? What is your dharma? What i

33、s your purpose? For me that discovery came in 1994 when I interviewed a little girl who had decided to collect pocket change in order to help other people in need. She raised a thousand dollars all by herself and I thought, well if that little 9-year-old girl with a bucket and big heart could do that, I wonder wha