奧巴馬 紀念曼德拉
THE PRESIDENT: At his trial in 1964, Nelson Mandela closed his statement from the dock saying, "I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
總統：納爾遜曼德拉（Nelson Mandela）在1964年接受審判時在被告席上結束他的陳述時說：“我曾爲反對白人統治而鬥爭，也曾爲反對黑人統治而鬥爭。我一直珍藏着一個民主、自由的社會的理想，讓所有人都生活在一個和諧共處、機會均等的社會中。我希望爲這個理想而生並將其付諸實現。但是，如果需要，我也願爲這樣一個理想獻出生命。”
And Nelson Mandela lived for that ideal, and he made it real. He achieved more than could be expected of any man. Today, he has gone home. And we have lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us -- he belongs to the ages.
納爾遜曼德拉爲這個理想而生，並將其變成現實。他的成就超出了我們能夠寄望於任何一個人去取得的。今天，他安息了。而我們失去了一位我們任何一個人能在這個地球上與之共渡時光的人中最有影響力、最有勇氣、最無比善良的一位。他不再屬於我們——他屬於千秋萬世。
Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa -- and moved all of us. His journey from a prisoner to a President embodied the promise that human beings -- and countries -- can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives. And the fact that he did it all with grace and good humor, and an ability to acknowledge his own imperfections, only makes the man that much more remarkable. As he once said, "I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."
曼德拉以其強烈的尊嚴和爲了他人的自由不惜犧牲自己的自由的不折的意志，改變了南非的面貌，並感動了我們所有人。他從一名囚徒變成一位總統的歷程體現了全人類——以及各個國家——都能變得更美好的希望。他移交權力並同那些關押他的人和解的承諾樹立了一個全人類都應當追求的典範，不論是在國家生活中，還是在我們的個人生活中。而他在做到這一切時還能保持風度和幽默，以及承認自己的不足的能力，這使他更加卓爾不羣。他曾說過：“我不是一個聖人，除非你們認爲聖人是一個不斷努力的罪人。”
I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid. I studied his words and his writings. The day that he was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they're guided by their hopes and not by their fears. And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set, and so long as I live I will do what I can to learn from him.
我是從曼德拉的一生得到啓迪的千百萬人之一。我從事的第一次政治活動，第一次同任何議題、政策或者政治有關的活動，是一次反對種族隔離的抗-議。我常常學習他的言論和文章。他走出監獄的那一天使我意識到，人類在奔向希望而沒有恐懼的時候是何等的大有作爲。我和世界各地許多人一樣，無法想象如果沒有曼德拉樹立的榜樣，我自己的一生會是什麼樣子。在我有生之年，我將竭盡所能向他學習。
To Graa Machel and his family, Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathy and gratitude for
sharing this extraordinary man with us. His life's work meant long days away from those who loved him the most. And I only hope that the time spent with him these last few weeks brought peace and comfort to his family.
米歇爾和我謹向格拉薩馬歇爾和曼德拉的家人致以最深沉的慰唁，並感謝他們與我們分享這位不平凡的人。他的畢生努力意味着長年累月遠離最愛他的人們。我真切地希望與他共同度過的最後這幾個星期爲他的家人帶來了平靜與安慰。
To the people of South Africa, we draw strength from the example of renewal, and reconciliation, and resilience that you made real. A free South Africa at peace with itself -- that's an example to the world, and that's Madiba's legacy to the nation he loved.
對南非人民，我們要說，你們通過復生、和解與堅毅樹立的榜樣給了我們力量。一個自由、和平的南非——這是世界的榜樣，這是“馬迪巴”爲他所熱愛的國家留下的遺產。
We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.
我們可能難以再見到像納爾遜曼德拉這樣的偉人。因此，我們的責任是盡我們所能把他樹立的榜樣傳承下去：基於愛——而不是恨——來作決定；永遠不要低估一個人所能帶來的變化；努力建設一個無愧於他的犧牲的未來。
For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived -- a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. May God Bless his memory and keep him in peace.
現在，讓我們停下來，爲納爾遜曼德拉曾經活着而表達我們的感激之情——他用雙手握住歷史，把道德宇宙的長虹折向正義。願上帝保佑他的記憶，使他安息。
祖瑪 紀念曼德拉
My Fellow South Africans,
親愛的南非同胞們：
Our beloved Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the founding President of our democratic nation has departed.
我們敬愛的納爾遜-羅利赫拉赫拉-曼德拉，這個民主國家的國父，已經去世了。
He passed on peacefully in the company of his family around 20h50 on the 5th of December 2015. 2015年12月5號20點50分（當地時間），曼德拉在家人的陪伴下安詳地離世了。 He is now resting. He is now at peace.
他現在離我們而去，與世長辭。
Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father.
我們的國家失去了它最偉大的兒子，我們的人民失去了自己的父親。
Although we knew that this day would come, nothing can diminish our sense of a profound and enduring loss.
儘管知道這一天終將到來，我們仍感到這是一個巨大在而無法彌補的損失。
His tireless struggle for freedom earned him the respect of the world.
他鍥而不捨地爲自由而奮鬥，贏得了世界的尊重。
His humility, his compassion, and his humanity earned him their love. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mandela family. To them we owe a debt of gratitude.
謙遜、慈悲和人文關懷爲他贏得了無盡的愛。我們和曼德拉家人同在，一起爲曼德拉總統祈禱。我們欠他們數不清的感謝。
They have sacrificed much and endured much so that our people could be free.
他們犧牲了許多，忍受了許多，才換來人民的自由。
Our thoughts are with his wife Mrs Graca Machel, his former wife Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, with his children, his grand-children, his great grand-children and the entire family.
曼德拉的妻子格拉薩·米歇爾（Grace Machel）、前任妻子溫尼·曼德拉(Winnie Madikizela-Mandeal)以及子女，孫輩和曾孫輩和整個家庭，我們和你們同在。
Our thoughts are with his friends, comrades and colleagues who fought alongside Madiba over the course of a lifetime of struggle.
曼德拉的朋友、陪伴在畢生不斷奮鬥的曼德拉身邊的同事，我們和你們同在。
Our thoughts are with the South African people who today mourn the loss of the one person who, more than any other, came to embody their sense of a common nationhood.
今日前來悼念曼德拉，踐行國家觀念的人民，我們和你們同在。
Our thoughts are with the millions of people across the world who embraced Madiba as their own, and who saw his cause as their cause.
視曼德拉爲自己的同胞，將曼德拉的事業視爲自己事業的世界人民，我們和你們同在。 This is the moment of our deepest sorrow.
這一刻，我們向曼德拉致以最深沉的哀傷。
Our nation has lost its greatest son.
我們的.國家失去了它最偉大的兒子。
Yet, what made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.
納爾遜·曼德拉的偉大之處在於他作爲一個人對其他人的關愛，我們在他的身上看見了自己。 And in him we saw so much of ourselves.
我們在他的身上看到了自己奮鬥的方向。
Fellow South Africans,
親愛的南非同胞們：
Nelson Mandela brought us together, and it is together that we will bid him farewell.
曼德拉讓我們團結在了一起，我們要一起爲他祈福送行。
Our beloved Madiba will be accorded a State Funeral.
我們將爲至愛的曼德拉舉行國葬。
I have ordered that all flags of the Republic of South Africa be lowered to half-mast from tomorrow, 6 December, and to remain at half-mast until after the funeral.
我已下命所有懸掛國旗的機構在6日起開始降半旗，直到葬禮結束。
As we gather to pay our last respects, let us conduct ourselves with the dignity and respect that Madiba personified.
我們聚在一起向曼德拉表示最後的敬意，讓我們向這位崇高而又受人尊敬的人告別吧！ Let us be mindful of his wishes and the wishes of his family.
讓我們謹記他和他家庭的心願。
As we gather, wherever we are in the country and wherever we are in the world, let us recall the values for which Madiba fought.
讓我們謹記曼德拉爲之奮鬥的價值觀吧，無論身在南非何處，無論身在世界何地。
Let us reaffirm his vision of a society in which none is exploited, oppressed or dispossessed by another.
讓我們繼承他的遺志，建立一個沒有剝削，沒有壓迫，沒有掠奪的社會。
Let us commit ourselves to strive together – sparing neither strength nor courage – to build a united, non-racial, non-se-xist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.
讓我們團結一心，增強力量和勇氣，建立一個團結、沒有種族歧視、性別歧視、民主繁榮的南非共和國。
Let us express, each in our own way, the deep gratitude we feel for a life spent in service of the people of this country and in the cause of humanity.
讓我們向這位窮其一生服務國家人民和人類事業的人表示衷心的感謝。
This is indeed the moment of our deepest sorrow.
這一刻，我們向曼德拉表示最深沉的哀悼。
Yet it must also be the moment of our greatest determination.
這一刻，也是我們彰顯堅定決心的時刻。
A determination to live as Madiba has lived, to strive as Madiba has strived and to not rest until we have realised his vision of a truly united South Africa, a peaceful and prosperous Africa, and a better world.
決心像曼德拉一樣活着，爲曼德拉奮鬥的事業而奮鬥，直至實現他的夙願，建立一個真正統一的南非，一個繁榮和平的南非，一個更加美好的世界。
We will always love you Madiba! May your soul rest in peace.
我們永遠愛您，曼德拉！願您的靈魂得到安息。
God Bless Africa. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
上帝保佑南非。上帝保佑非洲。
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is “thank you”. Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea Ive experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the worlds best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I cant remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the gay wizard joke, Ive still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called real life, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature.
A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average persons idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 anyones total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
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.
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 Internationals headquarters in London.
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.
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.
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.
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 countrys regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
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.
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.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
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.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples minds, imagine themselves into other peoples places.
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.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other peoples lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2015, likely to touch other peoples lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the worlds only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at
21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my childrens godparents, the people to whom Ive been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when Ive used their names for Death
Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
