TIM COOK2010年5月奥本大学演讲

May 14, 2010. Auburn University.
 2010年5月14日. 奥本大学  It's a tremendous honor and a privilege for me to be here with all of you. To be back to a place that really feels like home to me, and to be back to a place that brings back so many fond memories. Auburn has played a key role in my life and continues to mean a lot to me, as anyone who comes in my office at Apple or my home in Palo Alto instantly discovers. I have so much Auburn memorabilia you might think it was a California outpost for J&M or Anders.      能与大家在这里相聚我感到万分的荣幸。我又重新回到了这个像家一般温暖的地方，回到这里让我的温馨的记忆再次燃烧。奥本大学在我的人生中充当了异常关键的角色，直到现在他依然对我有着无比巨大的影响，这一点ÿ一个来到我在苹果的办公室或者在帕洛阿尔托的家的人就会马上意识地到。我的确拥有无数关于奥本大学的非常记忆，你可能想那是J&M和Anders 的店铺。  As thrilled as I am to be here I stand before you knowing that the lives of many people here and even more across our state and beyond are deeply affected by the tragedy off our shores. I grew up on the Gulf Coast and my family still lives there and I want you to know that my thoughts and hopes are with you.      我站在这里是如此的激动。你们一定都听闻过那场发生过在墨西哥湾的灾难，它曾给在座许多人的生活甚至是我们全州及以外的地区带来过严重冲击。我在墨西哥湾长大，直到现在，我的家人仍然生活在那里，所以我希望你可以理解我与你们的希望和想法是一样的。 Also as thrilled as I am to be here, I stand before you with a deep sense of humility both because of how I got here and who is here. I am where I am in life because my parents sacrificed more than they should have. Because of teachers, professors, friends, and mentors who cared more than they had to. And because of Steve Jobs and Apple who have provided me the opportunity to engage in truly meaningful work every day for over 12 years. And I know that I'm offering words of advice in front of a faculty whose ideas and research positively impact our lives. And I do so in a gathering where the faculty is complemented by the hard-won wisdom of so many parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents that have been a source of incredible inspiration for today's graduates.      我站在这里是如此的激动。同时我也必须以谦逊的态度站在这里因为我知道我是如何才能站在这个地方的也明白在这里都是谁。我之所以能在这里是因为我的父母牺牲地如此之多。是因为我的老师，教授，朋友以及我的导师他们对我的无限付出。也因为史蒂文乔布斯以及他的苹果公司给我的提供的机会让我在12年间ÿ天都得以专注于富有意义的工作。时我也明白，正在听我演讲的人，他们的思想、研究对我们的生活产生了无数积极的影响。我之所以谦逊，更因为这里有着无数学生的父母，祖父母甚至祖辈为我们的毕业生提供了难以置信的灵感源泉。  So bearing all that in mind I'll share some personal discoveries with you that have at least served me well. Discoveries based on this most improbable of journeys that I have been on.      正因为心中承担了这些，我将在这里和你们分享我自己的个人心得，至少这些发现对我有过不少帮助。这些心得来自我人生最难忘的旅程。  My most significant discovery so far in my life was the result of one single decision: My decision to join Apple. Working at Apple was never in any plan that I'd outlined for myself, but was without a doubt the best decision that I ever made. There have been other important decisions in my life, like my decision to come to Auburn. When I was in high school some teachers advised me to attend Auburn, other teachers advised me to attend the university of Alabama and, well, like I said some decisions are pretty obvious. The decision to come to Apple which I made in early 1998 was not so obvious. Since most of you graduates were 10 years old at the time you may not realize that the Apple in early 1998 was very different than the Apple of today. In 1998 there was no iPad or iMac or iPhone, there wasn't even an iPod--I know it's hard to imagine life without iPods. While Apple did make Macs, the company had been losing sales for years and was commonly considered to be on the verge of extinction. Only a few months before I'd accepted the job at Apple, Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Computer, was publicly asked what he would do to fix Apple, and he responded "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." In making this statement what distinguished Michael Dell was only that he had the courage to say what so many others believed.      我迄今为止在我生命中最有意义的心得是一个决定的结果：我决定加盟苹果。在苹果工作从δ在我的人生规划中出现，但是这无疑是我生命中我做过的最好的决定。当然也有其他的重要的决定，比如我决定来奥本大学。当我在高中的时候，学校里的一部分老师建议我来奥本大学，而另一部分却建议我考阿拉巴马大学，就像我说的，有些决定是顺其自然的。比如早在1998年我决定加盟苹果就不是这样。因为对于你们那个时候你们刚刚10岁，你们可能û有意识1998年的苹果公司与现在的苹果公司有着非常巨大的差异。在1998年，苹果还û有iPadû有iMac更û有iPhone，甚至û有iPod ，我知道现在的你们很难想象如果û有iPod、iMac甚至iPhone的生活。 尽管苹果开始生产Mac，但是那时候苹果公司的销售额逐年减少，而且被普遍认为处于濒临破产的边缘。在我接受在苹果的工作的前几个月，戴尔的创始人，戴尔公司CEO，Michael Dell，在公开场合被询问到如何拯救苹果公司，他回答说，“我会把它关掉，然后把钱还给股东。” 虽然这种话只有Michael Dell有勇气说的出，但是他却说出了大多数的人的想法。  So Apple was in a very different place than it is today, and my employer at the time, Compaq Computer, was the largest personal computer company in the world. Not only was Compaq performing much better than Apple, it was headquartered in Texas and therefore closer to Auburn football. Any purely rational consideration of cost and benefits lined up in Compaq's favor, and the people who knew me best advised me to stay at Compaq. One CEO I consulted felt so strongly about it he told me I would be a fool to leave Compaq for Apple.
    所以当时的苹果公司相对于今天处在非常尴尬的λ置，那时候我供职于Compaq公司，它曾经是世界上最大的个人电脑生产商。那时候Compaq公司的销售额不仅远远好于苹果公司，而且他的总部设于德克萨斯州，因此它离奥本大学的足球场很近。出于纯粹理性的收益与成本的考虑，我应该留在Compaq，而且我的朋友们也认为我应该留在Compaq。一个CEO 也坚定地告诉我，如果我为了苹果公司离开Compaq是非常愚蠢的。  In making the decision to come to Apple, I had to think beyond my training as an engineer. Engineers are taught to make decisions analytically and largely without emotion. When it comes to a decision between alternatives we enumerate the cost and benefits and decide which one is better. But there are times in our lives when the careful consideration of cost and benefits just doesn't seem like the right way to make a decision. There are times in all of our lives when a reliance on gut or intuition just seems more appropriate--when a particular course of action just feels right. And interestingly I've discovered it's in facing life's most important decisions that intuition seems the most indispensable to getting it right.      为了做出加盟苹果公司的决定，我不得不脱离作为工程师的思维方式。工程师做出的决定通常富有逻辑而且很大程度上不受感情影响。当我们遇到选择的时候，我们会把成本和收益列举出来，并且选择较好的哪一个。但是在我们生活中，有时候通过列举成本与收益得到的选择似乎不是最好的。在我们的人生道·上，偶尔依据直觉行事似乎更合适。令人感兴趣的是，我发现在面临人生最重要的抉择时，直觉似乎是让你做出正确选择的最不可或缺的东西。  In turning important decisions over to intuition one has to give up on the idea of developing a life plan that will bear any resemblance to what ultimately unfolds. Intuition is something that occurs in the moment, and if you are open to it. If you listen to it it has the potential to direct or redirect you in a way that is best for you. On that day in early 1998 I listened to my intuition, not the left side of my brain or for that matter even the people who knew me best. It's hard to know why I listened, I'm not even sure I know today, but no more than five minutes into my initial interview with Steve, I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind and join Apple. My intuition already knew that joining Apple was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work for the creative genius, and to be on the executive team that could resurrect a great American company. If my intuition had lost the struggle with my left brain, I'm not sure where I would be today, but I'm certain I would not be standing in front of you.

      在依靠直觉做出重要决定的时候，你必须放弃原有的人生规划，这些规划当然也可能与最后的结果有或多或少的相似之处。如果你接受直觉，那ô它就是在一瞬间发生的事情。如果你听从直觉的安排，那ô它很有可能将你引向对你最有益处的人生旅程。在1998年的一天，我听从了我的直觉，而不是经过左脑的思考或者听从我最好的朋友的建议。也许我很难解释为什ô我会选择听从我的直觉。知道今天，我仍然得不到答案，但是与史蒂文的第一次