上海交大版应用型大学英语综合教程第3册unit1课文翻译与练习答案

Unit 1 The Story of Steve Jobs

This is the text of the Commencement Address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, at Stanford University, delivered on June 12, 2005.

1 I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

2 It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. This was the start in my life.

3 And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trusted that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes 本文是苹果计算机公司和皮克斯动画工作室的首席执行官史蒂夫?乔布斯

于2005年6月12日在斯坦福大学毕业典礼上的演讲稿。

1 今天，我很荣幸能来到这所世界顶尖大学参加你们的毕业典礼。我大学没有毕业。说实话，现在是我最接近大学毕业的时刻。我在里德学院读了6个月就退学了，但是作为旁听生又在那里待了18个月左右，然后才真正离开学校。那么我为什么要退学呢？

2 这要从我还没有出生的时候说起。我的生母是个年轻未婚的研究生，因此她决定把我送给别人收养。她觉得我必须由有大学学历的人收养。于是，她安排好了一切，只要我一出生，就把我交给一位律师和他的妻子收养。但是我出生之后，他们在最后一刻决定他们还是想要一个女孩。当时我父母还在候补名单上，一天半夜他们接到一个电话，问他们：“有个新生儿，是意外怀上的，是个男孩，你们要吗？”他们回答：“当然要。”但是，我的生母随后发现我母亲大学没有毕业，我父亲甚至连高中也没毕业，因此拒绝在最后几份领养文件上签字。直到几个月后，我父母承诺将来一定让我上大学，她才同意了。这就是我生命的开始。

3 17年后，我确实上了大学。但是出于无知，我选了一所几乎与斯坦福一样昂贵的学校，因此，工薪阶层的父母把所有积蓄都花在了我的学费上。6个月过去了，我看不到其中的价值所在。我不知道我的人生定位，也不知道大学将如何帮我找到答案，而我正在这里耗尽父母一生的积蓄。所以我决定退学，并相信一切都会顺利。这在当时看来非常可怕，但现在回头