今年5月,谷歌创始人拉里·佩奇获邀在母校密歇根大学的毕业典礼上发表演讲。
谷歌的故事,是一个传奇,拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林两个博士没读完的辍学生在硅谷的车库里创业,最后建成了市值超过IBM的IT巨擎的传奇故事,谷歌里面有令无数打工族垂涎万尺的企业文化:牛仔裤、T-shirt衫的随意穿着,美餐、中餐、印度餐等一应俱全的大食堂,免费就医、洗衣、洗车的服务,甚至可以带上狗狗和滑板车一起上班……
虽然拉里·佩奇已是成功典范,但并没有夸夸其谈,他用诚挚的语言讲述自己家庭背景和人生经历,告诉大家人生中最宝贵的两样东西——梦想和亲友。
Class of 2009! First I’d like you to stand up, and wave and cheer your supportive family and friends! I’m sure you can find them out there. Show your love!
2009届的同学们,首先我希望大家都站起来,向支持你们的亲朋好友挥手致意!我相信你们都能在人群中找到他们,把你们的爱表现出来吧!
A long time ago, in this cold September of 1962, there was a Steven’s co-op at this very university. That co-op had a kitchen with a ceiling that had been cleaned by student volunteers probably every decade or so. Picture a college girl named Gloria, climbing up high on a ladder, struggling to clean that filthy ceiling. Standing on the floor, a young boarder named Carl was admiring the view. And that’s how they met. They were my parents, so I suppose you could say I’m a direct result of that kitchen chemistry experiment, right here at Michigan.
很久以前,1962年的寒冷9月,这座校园里有一家史蒂文消费合作社。此合作社有一间厨房,那里的天花板由学生志愿者打扫,大概每十来年才一次吧。想象一下,画面上有位名叫格洛里亚的女大学生,爬上了高高的梯子,努力地打扫那脏兮兮的天花板。一位名叫卡尔的寄宿生站在地上,为该情景钦佩不已。这就是他俩的初次邂逅。他俩就是我的父母亲。所以我想你们会说,我就是这里——密歇根大学那个“厨房化学实验”的直接成果。
Everyone in my family went here to Michigan: my brother, my Mom, my Dad—all of us. My father’s father worked in the Chevy plant in Flint, Michigan. He was an assembly line worker. He drove his two children here to Ann Arbor, and told them: That is where you’re going to college. I know it sounds funny now. Both of his kids actually did graduate from Michigan. That was the American dream.
我们家的所有成员都毕业于密歇根大学:我哥哥、我妈妈和爸爸——我们全家。我的祖父在密歇根州弗林特的雪佛兰汽车工厂工作,他是装配线上的一名工人。他曾开车把两个孩子送到安娜堡这儿,并告诉他们:这是你们今后要上的大学。我知道现在听起来很好笑。他的两个孩子也的确从密歇根大学毕业。这就是“美国梦”。
What I’m trying to tell you, this is WAY more than a homecoming for me. I have a story about following dreams. Or maybe more accurately, it’s a story about finding a path to make those dreams real.
我想告诉大家的是,来这儿对我的意义绝对不仅仅是重回旧地。我有个关于追寻梦想的故事,或者更确切地说,这是一个找到梦想成真之路的故事。
You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vividdream? And you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed, it will be completely gone by the next morning?
你们知道,午夜从一个逼真的梦境中醒来是什么感觉吗?你们知道如果床边没有纸笔,而第二天一早就忘个精光又会怎样吗?
Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: What if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links? And I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it’s important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribblingout the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks for me to download the web—he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough not to tell me. The optimismof youth is often underrated! Amazingly, at that time, I have no thoughts building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking and we made a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!