president bok, former president rudenstine, incoming president faust, members of the harvard corporation and the board of overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
尊敬的bok校長，rudenstine前校長，即將上任的faust校長，哈佛集團的各位成員，監管理事會的各位理事，各位老師，各位家長，各位同學：
i've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "dad, i always told you i'd come back and get my degree."
有一句話我等了三十年，現在終於可以說了：“老爸，我總是跟你說，我會回來拿到我的學位的!”
i want to thank harvard for this timely honor. i'll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.
我要感謝哈佛大學在這個時候給我這個榮譽。明年，我就要換工作了(註：指從微軟公司退休)……我終於可以在簡歷上寫我有一個本科學位，這真是不錯啊。
i applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. for my part, i'm just happy that the crimson has called me "harvard's most successful dropout." i guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … i did the best of everyone who failed.
我為今天在座的各位同學感到高興，你們拿到學位可比我簡單多了。哈佛的校報稱我是“哈佛大學歷史上最成功的輟學生”。我想這大概使我有資格代表我這一類學生髮言……在所有的失敗者里，我做得最好。
but i also want to be recognized as the guy who got steve ballmer to drop out of business school. i'm a bad influence. that's why i was invited to speak at your graduation. if i had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
但是，我還要提醒大家，我使得steve ballmer(註：微軟總經理)也從哈佛商學院退學了。因此，我是個有著惡劣影響力的人。這就是為什麼我被邀請來在你們的畢業典禮上演講。如果我在你們入學歡迎儀式上演講，那么能夠堅持到今天在這裡畢業的人也許會少得多吧。
harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. academic life was fascinating. i used to sit in on lots of classes i hadn't even signed up for. and dorm life was terrific. i lived up at radcliffe, in currier house. there were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew i didn't worry about getting up in the morning. that's how i came to be the leader of the anti-social group. we clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
對我來說，哈佛的求學經歷是一段非凡的經歷。校園生活很有趣，我常去旁聽我沒選修的課。哈佛的課外生活也很棒，我在radcliffe過著逍遙自在的日子。每天我的寢室里總有很多人一直待到半夜，討論著各種事情。因為每個人都知道我從不考慮第二天早起。這使得我變成了校園裡那些不安分學生的頭頭，我們互相粘在一起，做出一種拒絕所有正常學生的姿態。
radcliffe was a great place to live. there were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. that combination offered me the best odds, if you know what i mean. this is where i learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success.
radcliffe是個過日子的好地方。那裡的女生比男生多，而且大多數男生都是理工科的。這種狀況為我創造了最好的機會，如果你們明白我的意思。可惜的是，我正是在這裡學到了人生中悲傷的一課：機會大，並不等於你就會成功。
one of my biggest memories of harvard came in january 1975, when i made a call from currier house to a company in albuquerque that had begun making the world's first personal computers. i offered to sell them software.
我在哈佛最難忘的回憶之一，發生在1975年1月。那時，我從宿舍樓里給位於albuquerque的一家公司打了一個電話，那家公司已經在著手製造世界上第一台個人電腦。我提出想向他們出售軟體。