So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

那么我为什么还要谈论失败的收益呢?仅仅是因为失败意味着和非我的脱离,失败后我找到了自我,不再装成另外的形象,我开始把我所有的精力仅仅放在我关心的工作上。如果我在其他方面成功过,我可能就不会具备要求在自己领域内获得成功的决心。我变得自在,因为我已经经历过最大的恐惧。而且我还活着,我有一个值得我自豪的女儿,我有一个陈旧的打字机和很不错的写作灵感。我在失败堆积而成的硬石般的基础上开始重筑我的人生。

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

你们可能不会经历像我那么大的失败,但生活中面临失败是不可避免的。永远不失败是不可能,除非你活得过于谨慎,这样倒还不如根本就没有在世上生活过,因为你从一开始就失败了。

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

失败给了我内心的安宁,这种安宁是顺利通过测验考试获得不了的。失败让我认识自己,这些是没法从其他地方学到的。我发现自己有坚强的意志,而且,自我控制能力比自己猜想的还要强,我也发现自己拥有比红宝石更真的朋友。

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

从挫折中获得的知识越充满智慧、越有力,你在以后的生存中则越安全。除非遭受磨难,你们不会真正认识自己,也没法知道你们之间关系有多铁。这些知识才是真正的礼物,他们比我曾经获得的任何资格证书更为珍贵,因为这些是我经历过痛苦后才获得的。

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

如果给我一个时间机器,我会告诉21岁的自己,个人的幸福建立在自己能够认识到:生活不是拥有的物品与成就的清单。虽然你们会碰到很多和你们一样大或年长的人分不清楚生活与清单的区别,但你们的资格证书、简历,都不能等价于你们的生活。生活是困难的,也是复杂的,它完全超出任何人的控制,谦虚的认识到这些能使你们在生命的沉浮中得以顺利生存。

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

你们可能认为我选择想象力作为第二个演讲主题是因为它在重筑我人生的过程中起了作用,但这不是全部原因。虽然我会不遗余力地为床边故事的价值做辩护,但我已学会从更广泛的意义来评价想象力的价值。想象力不仅是一种能促使人类预想不存在事物的独特能力,从而成为所有发明和创新的源泉;从想象力或许是最具改革性和启示作用的能力这点讲,它更是一种能使我们同没有分享过他们经历的人产生共鸣的力量。

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.

我最伟大的生活经历之一发生在写《哈利波特》前,当然我在后来书中写的很多东西与这个经历有关。这个启示来源于我最早期工作之一。我在伦敦的大赦国际总部的研究部门工作,虽然我在中饭的时间逃出来写小说,但我需要这份工作来支付我20多岁时的房租。(注:大赦国际是一个全球性的志愿组织,致力于为释放由于信仰而被监禁的人以及给他们的家庭发放救济等方面的工作。)

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

在那儿我的狭小的工作室内,我匆忙得读着从各地集权政权内传出来的潦草信件,这些信件是那些冒着进监狱风险而向外传播发生在他们身上惨剧的人偷运出来。我看到了无影无踪就消失的人的相片,这些相片是家里人或朋友送来的。我读着被酷刑折磨的受害者的证据和他们受伤的照片;我打开手写的目击者对审讯和处决的摘要记录,以及对绑架和强奸的叙述。

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

我的许多同事以前是政治犯人,他们因为勇于不附和政府而独立思考,以致被赶出自己的家,或者被放逐。来拜访我们办公室的人包括那些传递消息的,或者尝试弄清楚那些被迫离开的人身后的真相。

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

我永远不会忘记那个非洲来的被酷刑折磨的受害者,他是一个和我那时候年龄相仿的年轻男子,但在他家乡经受过的拷打后,他已经有了精神病。当他向录像机讲述强加在他身上的暴行时,他无法控制地发抖。他比我高一英尺,但像一个小孩一样脆弱。后来我的工作是护送他去地下站,这个整个生活被野蛮摧毁的男子礼貌地握着我的手,祝福我一生幸福。

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

只要我活着,我就能记住我沿着一个空旷的走廊走,突然从后面关闭的一扇门传来我从没听到过的充满痛苦和恐怖的尖叫。门打开了,有个研究人员探出头,让我快点跑去弄点热饮料给坐在她旁边的那个年轻男子。原来,她刚告诉那个男子,为了报复他对他国家的政权做了公开的反对演讲,他的妈妈被抓住、处决了。

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

在我20多岁时工作的每一天,我提醒我自己我是多么的幸运啊,能生活在一个民主选举产生的政府的国家,在这里合法的陈述和公共审判是每一个人的权利。

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

每一天,我看到更多的证据,证明邪恶的人类为了获得、维持权力而加害与他们同样的人类。我开始为这些我看到的、听到的、读到的东西做恶梦,是文字恶梦。

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

然而,我也在大赦国际学到了比我以前知道的更多的人类善良的一面。

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

大赦国际动员了数千位没有因为信仰问题而被拷问或入狱的人,让他们来代表那些经历过这些的人行动起来。人类的同理心具有能引导集体行动的力量,这种力量能拯救生命,让囚徒获得自由。在这种活动中,那些拥有受到保护的个人福址和安全的普通人聚在了一起,来拯救他们不认识、也永远不会见面的人。我在这个过程中小小的参与是我生命中最卑微,也是最令人振奋的经历之一。

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.

人类和在这个星球上的其他生物不同,人类能够在没有自我经历的情况下学习和理解。他们可以设身处地的思他人所思,想他人所想。

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.

当然,这是一种力量,如同我虚构的魔法,这种力量是道德中立的。有人可能常运用这种能力去操作和控制,就像用于理解和同情一样。