Thank you, President Spar. Members of the board of trustees, esteemed members of the faculty, proud parents, squirming siblings, devoted friends: congratulations to all of you. But especially, congratulations to the magnificent Barnard Class of 2011.
非常感谢斯帕尔校长。尊敬的各位董事会成员、教授同仁、自豪的家长以及忠实的朋友们，祝贺大家。当然，特别要祝贺巴纳德学院2011届每一位毕业生，你们非常出色。
Looking at you all here fills me with great joy, in part because my college roommate, a member of your faculty, Caroline Weber, is here. Carrie, it means so much to me to be at your school, and in part because I work in Silicon Valley, let’s just say I’m not usually in a room with this many women. For the wonderful men who are here today, if you feel a little uncomfortable, we’re really glad you’re here, and no line for the men’s room. It’s worth it.
大家在这里齐聚一堂，我感到由衷的喜悦，一方面因为我大学时期的室友，卡洛琳·韦伯，也在这里，现在是你们的老师。凯莉，能够来到“你的”学校，对我来说意义重大。另一方面是因为我工作的地方在硅谷，像今天这样和众多女士同处一室的机会在那个地方可不常见。对于今日在场的各位出色男士，如果你觉得有点不自在的话，我得说大家都很高兴有你们在场，而且并不是坐在男士专区里，这很值得。
I graduated from college exactly 20 years ago. And as I am reminded every single day where I work, that makes me really old. Mark Zuckerberg, our founder and my boss, said to me the other day, “Sheryl, when do midlife crises happen? When you’re 30?” Not a good day at the office. But I am old enough to know that most of our lives are filled with days we do not remember. Today is not one of them. You may not remember one word I say. You may not even remember who your graduation speaker is, although for the record, Sheryl with an S. You won’t remember that it was raining and we had to move inside. But you will remember what matters, which is how you feel as you sit here, as you walk across the stage, as you start the next phase of your life.
我从大学毕业已经20年了，到现在还能回忆起过去学习的每一天，这么一说发现自己真的老了。facebook的创始人马克?扎克伯格——当然也是我的老板曾问过我：“雪莉，中年危机什么时候爆发?三十岁吗?”那天我工作得不太开心。可随着年龄增长，我发现生命中的绝大部分日子开始变得模糊而无从记忆。但是今天，绝不是那些模糊日子中的一天。也许我现在说的话，你们今后一个字也想不起来;也许你们连在毕业典礼上发言人的名字都没记住;也忘记了因为下雨我们的典礼不得不搬到室内。但是你会记住那些对你来说更重要的事——坐在下面座位上的感受，走过讲台时心里的念头，以及生活即将开启新篇章时内心的激动澎湃与不安。
Today is a day of celebration, a day to celebrate all the hard work that got you to this place where you can sit, kind of sweltering in that gown. Today is a day of thanks, a day to thank all the people that helped you get here, the people who nurtured you and taught you, who held your hand, who dried your tears. Today is a day of reflection. Excuse me, a little laryngitis.
今天是值得庆祝的日子，在这一天，大家付出的所有努力都得到了回报，所以才能够坐在这里，穿着这身让我们引以为荣的长袍。当然，可能有的人已经汗流浃背了。今天也是感恩的一天，让我们一起感谢那些曾经帮助过你的人、养育你长大的人、向你传授知识的人，在困难时握着你的手为你擦干眼泪的人。
As you leave Barnard today, you leave not just with an education, but you take your place amongst the fortunate. Some of you came here from families where education was expected and emphasized. Others of you had to overcome far more obstacles to get here, and today you become the very first member of your family to graduate from college. What an amazing accomplishment. But no matter where you started, as of today you are all privileged. You are privileged in the most important sense of the word, which is that you have almost boundless opportunity in front of you. So, the question is, what are you going to do with it? What will you do with this education you worked so hard to achieve? What in the world needs to change, and what part do you plan on playing in changing it?
从今以后，各位将离开巴纳德学院，但今后伴你同行的并不仅仅是一纸文凭，而是无尽的幸运。在座的诸位当中，有些人来自重视教育的家庭，而另一些却是克服了重重阻碍才获得了在这里学习的机会，今天她们成为了家族中第一个大学生，这是多么神奇的成绩。无论你们的起点在哪里，在今天你们都享有同样特权——在你们面前有无穷无尽的机遇在等着你们。问题是，你要怎样来迎接这些机遇?你打算如何运用在学校里刻苦学习获取的知识呢?世界需要什么样的改变，而你在这场改变之中又愿意扮演什么样的角色?
女性要提高社会与家庭地位
Pulitzer Prize winners Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof visited this campus last year and they spoke about their critically important book, Half the Sky. In that book, they assert that the fundamental moral challenge of the 19th century was slavery; of the 20th century, it was totalitarianism; and for our century, it is oppression of girls and women around the world. Their book is a call to arms, to give women all over the world, women who are exactly like us except for the circumstances into which they were born, basic human rights.
普利策奖的获得者伍洁芳和尼古拉斯?克里斯托夫2010年访问巴纳德学院的时候曾经提到过他们非常重要的一部著作《半边天》。书中说十九世纪最主要的道德挑战是奴隶制;二十世纪是集权主义;到了二十一世纪，则是全世界对女性的压制。这本书号召全世界的女性同胞武装起来——尤其是那些出生在和我们不同社会环境中的女性——为争取基本的人权而战斗。
Compared to these women, we are lucky. In America, as in the entire developed world, we are equals under the law. But the promise of equality is not equality. As we sit here looking at this magnificent blue-robed class, we have to admit something that’s sad but true: men run the world. Of 190 heads of 2 state, nine are women. Of all the parliaments around the world, 13% of those seats are held by women. Corporate America top jobs, 15% are women; numbers which have not moved at all in the past nine years. Nine years. Of full professors around the United States, only 24% are women.
相比较而言我们是幸运的。美国和其他所有发达国家一样，在法律的保护下，我们都是平等的，但是承诺平等并不等同于真正得到了平等。即使现在坐在下面的各位，看看你的周围，我们不得不承认一个令人难过的事实：男性掌控着世界。两个州共计190名官员，只有9名女性;全世界的各国议会，只有13%的席位是女性;美国大公司的高层管理者，15%是女性;在全美国获得教授资格的人中，只有24%是女性。在过去的九年里，这些数字没有任何进步，九年啊。
I recognize that this is a vast improvement from generations in the past. When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching. She raised me and my sister to believe that we could do anything, and we believed her. But what is so sad—it doesn’t just make me feel old, it makes me truly sad—is that it’s very clear that my generation is not going to change this problem. Women became 50% of the college graduates in this country in 1981, 30 years ago. Thirty years is plenty of time for those graduates to have gotten to the top of their industries, but we are nowhere close to 50% of the jobs at the top. That means that when the big decisions are made, the decisions that affect all of our worlds, we do not have an equal voice at that table.
我承认，相对于过去的几代人，这已经是巨大的进步。当年我的母亲穿着长袍坐在毕业典礼大堂的时候，她所面对的出路只有两个：护士和老师。她让我和姐姐相信我们能做任何事，我们相信她。但令人难过的是——这不仅仅是让我觉得自己老了，而是我真的很难过——在我的这个年代，问题依然没有多少改变。三十年前，也就是1981年的时候，美国女性大学毕业生占到了50%。三十年的时间足够那些毕业生成为业界精英，可事实上我们离“百分之五十”这个数字还远得很。这意味着在做出能够影响世界的重大决策的时候，女性完全没有同等地位。
So today, we turn to you. You are the promise for a more equal world. You are our hope. I truly believe that only when we get real equality in our governments, in our businesses, in our companies and our universities, will we start to solve this generation’s central moral problem, which is gender equality. We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.
今天，我们这一代将希望寄托于在座的各位。你们是更平等的世界的希望，也是我们这一代人的希望。我真的相信，只有我们的政府、企业、公司和学校实现了真正意义上的平等，我们才能开始解决这个时代最主要的道德问题——性别平等。我们需要生活在社会各个阶层的女性，包括身处顶层的女性来改变推动的力量，重塑对话，让女性同胞的声音被听到、被注意，而不是听而不闻、视而不见。
So my hope for all of you here, for every single one of you, is that you’re going to walk across the stage and get your diploma. You’re going to go out tonight or maybe all summer and celebrate. You deserve it. And then you’re going to lean way into your career. You’re going to find something you love doing, and you’re going to do it with gusto. You’re going to pick your field and you’re going to ride it all the way to the top.
