high salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut, the reassurance for many of you that you will be in new york working and living and enjoying life alongside your friends, the promise of interesting work — there are lots of ways to explain these choices. for some of you, it is a commitment for only a year or two in any case. others believe they will best be able to do good by first doing well. yet, you ask me why you are following this path.
也許是為了高薪——難以抵抗的招聘誘惑，也許是為了留在紐約然後和朋友們一起工作生活和享受人生，也許是為了做自己感興趣的工作——對於這些選擇可以有各種各樣的理由。對你們中的一些人，無論如何那也只是個一兩年的契約。其他的一部分人相信他們只有在過得“富有”了以後才有可能過得“富有”價值。不過，你們依然會問我，為什麼要走這條路？
i find myself in some ways less interested in answering your question than in figuring out why you are posing it. if professors goldin and katz have it right; if finance is indeed the “rational choice,” why do you keep raising this issue with me? why does this seemingly rational choice strike a number of you as not understandable, as not entirely rational, as in some sense less a free choice than a compulsion or necessity? why does this seem to be troubling so many of you?
我發現我自己有時候對於回答你們的問題並沒有多大興趣，比較而言更感興趣的卻是捉摸你們為什麼提那些問題。如果果真如goldin和katz教授所說；如果去搞金融確實是一個“理性”的選擇，為什麼你們會不停地向我提出這類問題？為什麼看似理性的選擇卻讓你們當中相當一部分人認為是令人費解的，偽理性的，或出於某種需求和強迫所作出的並不自由的選擇？為什麼這個問題似乎困擾著你們當中的很多一部分人？
you are asking me, i think, about the meaning of life, though you have posed your question in code — in terms of the observable and measurable phenomenon of senior career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics. the meaning of life — capital m, capital l — is a cliché — easier to deal with as the ironic title of a monty python movie or the subject of a simpsons episode than as a matter about which one would dare admit to harboring serious concern.
我想，你們問我的是：關於人生價值的問題。雖然你們問得比較隱晦——即是些可以觀察和衡量的大四學生職業選擇的問題，而不是那抽象的，晦澀的，甚至會令人難堪的形上學範疇的問題。人生價值，要人生？還是要價值？作為monty python那部片子的諷刺意味的片名是不難理解的，作為《辛普森一家》的其中一集的主題也是不難理解的，可是當關係到“生存問題”的時候，就是不那么好辦了。
but let's for a moment abandon our harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.
那讓我們還是暫時摘下那戴著的哈佛面具，收起那缺乏熱情的冷漠，卸下我們看似刀槍不入的偽裝，讓我們嘗試去探尋你們問的一些問題的答案。
i think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally successful, but to be meaningful, and you are not sure how those two goals fit together. you are not sure if a generous starting salary at a prestigious brand name organization together with the promise of future wealth will feed your soul.