听英美国家政治家、名人的演讲发言，经常有非常精彩独到之处，我们可以学习借鉴，为我们的口语表达和写作等增色。
今天我们来看看《哈利波特》的作者J.K.罗琳女士2008年6月5日在哈佛大学的毕业典礼的演讲的前半部分。
Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured 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 convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.
nausea：恶心，反胃
endure：忍受
at the thought of：一想到
commencement address：毕业典礼演讲
win-win situation：双赢局面
take deep breaths：深呼吸
Gryffindor：格兰芬多，霍格沃茨四大学院之一，亦是哈利·波特、赫敏·格兰杰和罗恩•韦斯莱等许多主要人物所读的学院，以象征勇气而著称。
这篇演讲中，J.K.罗琳式的幽默体现的淋漓尽致，此处便是一例。演讲既是荣誉，也是压力，实现了哈佛和罗琳的双赢——罗琳减肥，哈佛师生们听到了一篇精心准备的演讲。文段末尾，实际上罗琳不动声色地赞扬了哈佛大学，因为她说要想象自己在格兰芬多聚会上——为什么不是在跟黑魔法和邪恶势力纠葛不清的斯莱特林学院的聚会呢？这至少说明哈佛大学和她心目中的格兰芬多还是有几分相似之处的，才能让她产生这种联想和想象。
哈佛大学不仅给予我无上的荣誉，而且几周以来，一想到要作毕业典礼演讲，我就担忧不已，感到阵阵反胃，身材都变苗条了。这可真是双赢啊！现在我只需要深呼吸，看着红色旗帜，想象自己就在世界上最大的格兰芬多聚会上。
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 can’t 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, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
deliver a address：演讲
cast mind back to/ reflect on：回想
turn out：结果是
inadvertently：无心地
gay：快乐的
又是罗氏幽默。为了写演讲稿，罗琳回想之前自己所听的演讲，结果发现自己完全忘记了，于是感到释然，不用太担心自己的话会有深远的影响，以免自己不小心改变了哈佛毕业生的轨迹。
发表毕业演讲，责任重大——至少在我回想自己的毕业典礼前，我都深信不疑。我毕业典礼那天，演讲人是英国著名哲学家玛丽·沃诺珂（Mary Warnock）。回想她的演讲，对我的演讲助益甚大，因为哪怕她的只言片语，我都毫无印象。这一发现让我大为释然，继续写演讲稿，而不用担心我可能会无意中导致各位放弃前途光明的商业、法律或者政治生涯，转而变成巫师，乐得忘乎所以。
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 may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
come up with：想出来
extol：赞扬
quixotic：堂吉诃德式的，不切实际的
paradoxical：矛盾的
bear with：忍受，忍耐
我想到了两个答案。正值庆祝各位学业有成之际，我决定跟各位谈谈失败的益处。各位也即将步入“现实生活”中，我也想强调想象力的重要性。这两者听起来可能不切实际，或者互相矛盾，但且听我一一道来。
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.
strike a balance：取得平衡
在我人生的前半部分时间，在自己的目标和至亲们对我的期望之间，我一直挣扎着取得平衡。
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.
in parenthesis：插一句（作为插入语）
expiry date：有效期
take the wheel：掌控方向
罗琳在此将子女和父母的关系讲的很清楚。年轻时，子女也许可以责怪父母的过失，但当子女自己掌舵时，一切责任全都在自己身上，不能再想着推脱到父母身上。当然，这应该是就一般家庭而言，不排除有极个别一直“坑子女”的家长。此外，expiry date的用法也很有趣，一般常见于食物等产品有效期上，这边变成了类似于end的用法，具体的概念泛化了。
我想要澄清一点，我并不因父母的观点而责怪他们。你不能总是责怪父母给你带错了路——当你长大，开始掌握自己的人生时，你就责无旁贷了。
What is more, I cannot criticize 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 romanticized only by fools.
ennoble：使高贵
entail： 导致
romanticize：使浪漫化
这段话罗琳谈到贫困，但她并没有灌鸡汤，说贫困磨练了她的品性，或者是贫困的种种好处，反而是很现实地说虽然她历经贫困，但贫困本身并不令她引以为豪。
此外，我不能因父母期望我不要过苦日子而责难他们。他们自己一直穷困潦倒，我毕业后也始终一贫如洗。我们都觉得，贫穷不是什么可贵的经历。贫穷带来恐惧、压力、甚至绝望。贫穷意味着无尽细微的屈辱和困苦。如果靠一己之力摆脱贫困，那么大可引以为傲。但对于贫困本身，但是只有傻子才会加以浪漫化。
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 person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.
well-acquainted with：熟知
conception：概念
但是，从哈佛毕业意味着你们很少接触失败。你们害怕失败的心理，可能跟求胜之心一样强烈，驱使着你们前进。事实上，你们概念中的失败，可能跟一般人理解的成功想去不远，因为你们的起点已经非常高了。
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 that 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.
constitute：构成，组成
by … measure/standard：按…标准
on …scale：在…规模上
short-lived：短暂的
come to pass：发生
这段话罗琳详细地描述了自己曾经有多么失败：failed on an epic scale、the biggest failure、as poor as it is possible都是看来非常夸张的描述，但是对于当时的罗琳来说，可能毫不夸张。
最终，我们都必须要自行判断失败的定义。但如果你不加以反抗，世界很快就会给你施加一套失败的标准。因此我可以说，按照一般标准，仅仅毕业7年后，我就已经失败得一塌涂地。一段短的不像样的婚姻分崩离析，工作丢了，又是单亲母亲，除了没有沦落到无家可归以外，我穷到了现代英国的极致。父母对我的担忧，我自己的担忧，最终都变成了现实。从任何标准看，我都没见过比我更失败的人。
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 then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
fairy tale：童话故事
和上述的贫困一样，罗琳也没有灌鸡汤说失败多么美好，而是坦诚地分享了那段时间她的煎熬和不知所措。
但我可不是要站在这里，告诉你们失败是件趣事。我生命中的那段时光充满黑暗。媒体后来描绘的童话般蜕变之道，我根本没有想到。我不知道要在黑暗的隧道中走多久。很长一段时间，隧道尽头的一点光芒，都只是希望，而非现实。
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 been realized, 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.
strip away：除掉，去掉
rock bottom：最低谷
这段话罗琳道出了失败的好处，在于看清自己，不再纠结不重要的事情，放手去做自己想做的事，因为已经退无可退，败无可败了。跟“穷则变，变则通”的思想有点相似。
那么我为何还要谈论失败的好处呢？很简单，因为失败意味着剥离所有琐碎之物。我开始做回真正的自己，把所有的精力放在唯一至关重要的事上。如果我在其他领域取得了成功，那么我可能永远不会下决心在我真正擅长的领域有所作为。我放手一搏，因为我最害怕的事情已经发生，而我还活着，还有我可爱的女儿，还有一台旧打字机，以及一个雄心勃勃的点子。因此人生最低谷成了我触底反弹的基础。
在这部分演讲中，J.K.罗琳毫不避讳地跟我们分享了她生命中最穷困潦倒、举步维艰的时间。媒体时常对她在困难中写作的经历津津乐道，乐此不彼。但是从她的经验来看，失败和贫穷本身不值得大书特书，重要的是透过失败，找回自己。
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