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Together, Six Feet Apart
– Address by Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber at Princeton University 2021 Commencement
May 16, 2021
在一起，相距六英尺
——普林斯顿大学校长2021年毕业典礼演讲
2021年5月16日
Tradition allows the Princeton president to share a few thoughts with our graduating students at Commencement. I regard that as a great privilege in any year, but especially so in this one, when all of you have persevered valiantly and brilliantly to overcome unprecedented challenges.
学校传统允许普林斯顿大学校长在毕业典礼上与我们毕业的学生分享一些想法。我知道这是每一年赋予校长的极大特权，但在今年尤其如此，因为你们所有人在面对前所未有的挑战时表现出的坚强和勇敢。
By completing your studies amidst this awful pandemic, you have distinguished yourselves even by the standards of this University’s long and illustrious history. And in so doing, you have earned the right to participate in this unique and memorable Commencement ceremony, a ceremony that, I submit to you, provides a surprisingly apt metaphor for the past year.
在这场可怕的疫情中完成学业，即使以这所大学悠久而辉煌的历史的标准，你们也绝对前所未有。你们因此赢得了参加这个独特而难忘的毕业典礼的权利，我向你们表示，这一仪式很好的反映了过去一年的努力。
We are together, gathered through creative planning, technological assistance, the tireless work of many people, and a fierce determination to mark with physical presence this important moment in your lives. And yet as we are together, we are also apart, masked, separated by carefully marked six-foot intervals, and denied many of the joyous embraces that we would ordinarily exchange on graduation day.
我们聚集在一起，因为创造性的计划，技术上的援助，许多人的不懈努力，以及坚定的决心，我们最终亲身经历生命中的这一重要时刻。不过，尽管我们聚在一起，我们也保持了距离，戴着口罩，被精心标记的六英尺间隔分开，放弃我们通常在毕业这天许多快乐的拥抱。
Such combinations of separation and sharing have permeated the last fifteen months. The separation is obvious. We have endured quarantines and lock-downs. We have learned the term “social distancing,” which – hard though this is to believe – almost none of us had heard two years ago. We [have] had to give up communal dining, large events, small parties, and interpersonal contact of many kinds. We have met and learned through video conferencing rather than in person.
这种分隔和共享的共存已渗透到过去的15个月中。分隔是显而易见的。我们经历了隔离和封锁。我们学会了“社交距离”这个词，尽管很难相信这一点，但我们中几乎没有人在两年前听说过这个词。我们不得不放弃公共用餐、大型活动、小型派对和各种人际交往。我们通过视频会议而不是面对面地见面和学习。
The sharing may be less obvious than the separation, but it is equally real. It begins with the separation itself, and, more generally, with losses that people throughout the world have endured over the past year. The losses inflicted by COVID-19 have undoubtedly differed significantly from person to person. They have also differed across racial and economic groups, reminding us once again of the need to dedicate ourselves to achieving genuine social justice, not only in this country but around the world.
分享可能不如分隔那么明显，但同样真实。它始于分隔本身，更普遍地说，始于过去一年中世界各地人民遭受的损失。新冠病毒造成的损失无疑因人而异。它们在种族和经济群体之间也有所不同，这再次提醒我们，不仅在这个国家，而且在世界各地，都需要致力于实现真正的社会正义。
We should recognize these disparities while also recognizing that in real and meaningful ways, we have shared the anxieties and burdens of this pandemic with people not only throughout this stadium, or this country, but across social divisions, international borders, and, indeed, vast continents. We fight a plague without boundaries, and our experience informs connections we feel with those suffering from the terrible outbreaks afflicting India, South America, and other parts of the globe.
我们应该认识到这些差异，同时也应该认识到，我们不仅在这个体育场或这个国家，而且跨社会、跨国家，甚至跨大陆的以真实和有意义的方式，一起承担了这一疫情的焦虑和负担。我们无国界地抗击疫情，我们的经验让我们与那些在印度、南美洲和全球其他地区遭受可怕疫情的人之间产生联系。
To take another, smaller piece of this phenomenon: you now share with other graduating college students throughout the world this year a parallel experience of disruption, constraint, challenge, persistence, and achievement in response to this pandemic. Rarely, if ever, has humanity experienced such durable and unfamiliar forms of loss so widely and simultaneously.
从这一现象可以再看到一点：你们现在正与世界各地其他毕业生们分享应对这种疫情的破坏、约束、挑战、坚持和成就的平行经历。人类很少有如此广泛并同时经历的这种持久和难以预料的苦难。
The last year has also involved sharing in a second sense. Though we have been unable to interact in person, we have connected online in ways that most of us would not have thought possible, and indeed that would not have been possible even a few years ago. Most of us are thoroughly Zoomed-out and eager to return to physical forms of togetherness, but I doubt that any of us will abandon entirely our new virtual mechanisms of communication.
去年也涉及到第二种意义上的分享。尽管我们无法亲自互动，但我们以大多数人认为不可能的方式在线连接，事实上，这甚至在几年前也是不可能的。我们大多数人都完全Zoom视频化了，并渴望回到物理形式的相聚状态，但我知道从此以后我们不会放弃使用这种新的虚拟沟通机制。
We may perhaps find some wisdom about these newest aspects of human community by considering very old ideas about the topic. Two millennia ago, Aristotle observed that people must cooperate with one another because they cannot otherwise satisfy their most basic physical needs. But, he noted, once people are forced together by their physical needs, they inevitably begin discussing and pursuing ideas about human flourishing. His insight was that because we must make and break bread together, we must form a common good together.
通过对这一主题的旧观念的思考，我们可能会找到一些关于人类社会这些最新方面的智慧。两千年前，亚里士多德观察到人们必须相互合作，否则他们无法独自一人满足自身最基本的需求。但是，他指出，一旦人们被身体需求强迫在一起，他们不可避免地开始讨论和追求人类发展的想法。他的观察是，由于我们必须一起制作和分享面包，我们必须一起形成共同利益。
As this year’s countless Zoom calls vividly illustrate, human technology has transformed, if not diminished or severed, this connection between the physical and intellectual realms of human activity. We can now interact politically, academically, artistically, and socially without ever being in the same room, the same state, or even the same country.
正如今年无数的Zoom视频会议生动地表明，人类技术已经改变了，如果不是减少或切断了，人类活动中的身体和脑力的联系。我们现在可以在政治、学术、艺术和社会领域进行互动，而不必呆在同一个房间、同一个州，甚至同一个国家。
What technology made possible, the pandemic made compulsory. For most of this past year, we were present to one another in only two dimensions, as flattened figures on screens, while our three-dimensional bodies inhabited vastly different spaces. We shared an emaciated world.
技术使其成为可能，而疫情使其成为必须。在过去的一年里，我们只在二维上呈现彼此，就像屏幕上扁平的人物一样，而我们的三维物体栖息在截然不同的空间中。我们同在一个虚弱的世界。
It is not enough. The fractious, irritated, angry state of our national politics testifies to that fact.
这还不够。我们国家政治的易怒、恼怒、愤怒的状态证明了这一事实。
So too, more poignantly, does our presence in this stadium today. We could have deployed technological machinery to produce a whiz-bang virtual Commencement, which you could have watched from the comfort of your homes. We concluded – with your vigorous encouragement – that it would be better to sit in this cavernous stadium, arrayed across a giant field and surrounding bleachers, together, six feet apart.
更令人心酸的是，我们今天在这个体育场的存在也是如此。我们本可以架设机器安排一场在线毕业典礼，你们可以在舒适的家中观看。但在你们的积极鼓励下，我们最终决定相聚在这个体育场里，在巨大的操场上布置露天座位，彼此相距六英尺。
We lose an essential dimension of the human when we cannot be together physically. If indeed people must forge a common good because we need to make and break bread together, the pandemic suggests that something like the reverse is also true.
当我们身体无法在一起时，我们会失去人类的基本维度。如果人们确实因为需要一起制作和分享面包而形成共同利益，那么疫情表明，相反的情况也是如此。
Simply put, our long, unwelcome separation teaches us this: to forge a common good together, we must break bread together. We must, in other words, relate to one another not just as disembodied intellects, interests, or ideologies, or as faces in Zoom boxes, but also as real, three-dimensional people who share basic needs and a common humanity.
简而言之，我们长期、不受欢迎的分隔教会了我们这一点：要一起形成共同利益，我们必须一起分享面包。换句话说，我们必须彼此联系，不仅要作为无形的智力、利益或意识形态，或作为Zoom视频中的面孔，而且作为有共同基本需求和共同人性的真实的、立体的人。
I hope you will bear that idea in mind as you venture into this strange, uncertain world post-Princeton and post-pandemic. I also hope that you will find ways to break bread and reconnect not only with one another but also with people far outside your own social circles. As the political philosopher Danielle Allen of the great Princeton Class of 1993 has urged in a passage that riffs on Aristotle, we must find ways to convey “the techniques and expertise of friendship” into “the rivalrous realm of politics.”
从普林斯顿毕业、渡过疫情危机之后，我希望你们在踏进这个奇怪、不确定的世界时，会永远记住这一点。我也希望你们能找到分享面包的方法，不仅彼此重新建立联系，而且与远离自己社交圈外的人重新建立联系。正如1993届普林斯顿毕业生、伟大的的政治哲学家丹妮尔·艾伦在一段即兴表演亚里士多德的文章中所呼吁的那样，我们必须想办法将“友谊的技巧和专业知识”传达到“政治的竞争领域”。
We must all recover, renew, and reinvigorate the genuinely human forms of connection so missing from our world over the last year and all too absent, even before the pandemic, from our country’s conversations about America’s common good. As you venture forth beyond this campus, I hope that you will seize the opportunity to build the genuine community that we so urgently need.
我们都必须恢复、更新和重振过去一年中我们世界严重缺失的真正的人际联系形式，甚至在疫情爆发之前，我们国家关于美国共同利益的对话也太缺乏这种联系。当你们走出校园时，我希望你们能抓住机会，建设我们迫切需要的真正社区。
The journey that commences today will take you into a new and changing world. I am confident that you are well prepared for the challenge. You have excelled here, and you have persisted through the pandemic with extraordinary determination, creativity, intelligence, compassion, and courage. We will need your leadership, your vision, and your dedication to the service of humanity.
今天开始的旅程将带你们进入一个新的不断变化的世界。我相信你们已经为挑战做好了充分准备。你们在疫情中表现出色，以非凡的决心、创造力、智慧、同情心和勇气。我们需要你们的领导力、远见以及对人类服务的奉献精神。
On behalf of the University, its faculty, administration, trustees, and alumni, I offer you best wishes as you go forth. We hope you will always consider this campus one of your homes, and that you will return often, so that we can be together again in the future – together again, without also being six feet apart! I, and all of my colleagues, extend our sincerest congratulations on this happy day to all of Princeton’s doctoral and master’s degree recipients and to Princeton University’s Great Class of 2021!
我代表学校、教职员工、行政部门、懂事及校友，在你们毕业时致以最良好的祝愿。希望你们始终将这个校园视为自己的家，常回家看看，在将来我们能够再次相聚——再次在一起，而且不必相距六英尺！在这个快乐的一天，我和我所有的同事，向普林斯顿大学所有博士和硕士学位获得者以及普林斯顿大学2021届优秀学生们表示最诚挚的祝贺！
Congratulations!
祝贺你们！
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发表于 2021-5-24 11:18:26
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发表于 2021-5-24 16:49:34
