I want to thank the Mills College Class of '83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in public in the language of women. 我要感谢米尔斯学院83届毕业生给了我一个难得的机会：用女性的语言在公共场合大声发言。
I know there are men graduating, and I don't mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, "If you don't understand Greek, please signify by nodding." Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. That's why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. 我知道有男生也在毕业，我无意将他们排除在外，绝非如此。有一部希腊悲剧中，希腊人对外国人说："如果你不懂希腊语，请点头示意。"无论如何，毕业典礼通常在一个心照不宣的约定下进行：所有毕业生要么是男性，要么应该是男性。这就是为什么我们都穿着这些十二世纪风格的长袍，穿在男人身上很好看，穿在女人身上却像蘑菇或怀孕的鹳鸟。
Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language. The words are all words of power. You've come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You can't even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours. 知识传统是男性的。公共演讲使用公共语言，即民族或部落语言；而我们部落的语言是男人的语言。当然，女人也学这种语言。我们并不笨。如果你能凭他们说的话分辨出撒切尔夫人和里根，或是英迪拉·甘地和索摩查将军，请告诉我怎么分辨。这是男人的世界，所以它说的是男人的语言。这些词汇都是权力的词汇。你已经走了很长的路，宝贝，但这条路永远不够长。你甚至不能通过出卖自己到达那里：因为那里是他们的，不是你的。
Maybe we've had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life. Maybe we need some words of weakness. Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything -- instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It won't sound right. 也许我们已经听够了权力的话语和关于人生战斗的谈论。也许我们需要一些脆弱的话语。通常在这个时候，人们会说希望你们从大学这座象牙塔走向现实世界，开创辉煌的事业，或者至少帮助丈夫开创事业，让我们的国家强大，在所有事情上都取得成功——但是，与其谈论权力，不如让我在这里像女人一样说话？这听起来会不对劲。
It's going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if -- only if -- you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they're beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. 听起来会很糟糕。如果我说我对你们的希望首先是——只有在你们想要孩子的前提下——我希望你们能有孩子。不是一群。一两个，足够了。我希望他们很漂亮。我希望你们和他们有足够的食物，有一个温暖干净的地方住，有朋友，有自己喜欢的工作。
Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about success? 那么，这就是你们上大学的目的吗？仅此而已？那成功呢？
Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don't even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure. 成功是他人的失败。成功是我们可以继续梦想的美国梦，因为大多数地方的大多数人，包括我们当中的三千万人，在贫困的可怕现实中清醒地生活着。不，我不祝你们成功。我甚至不想谈论它。我想谈论失败。
Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself -- as I know you already have -- in dark places, alone, and afraid. 因为你们是人类，你们将会遭遇失败。你们将会遭遇失望、不公、背叛和无法弥补的损失。你们会发现自己在自以为强大的地方其实很脆弱。你们会为了占有而工作，然后发现自己被占有了。你们会发现自己——我知道你们已经发现了——身处黑暗的地方，孤独而恐惧。
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign. 我对你们的希望，对我所有的姐妹、女儿、兄弟和儿子的希望，是你们能够在那里生活，在那个黑暗的地方生活。在我们崇尚成功的理性文化所否认的地方生活，那个被称为流放之地、不适宜居住、充满异国情调的地方。
Well, we're already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded from, alien to, the self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So that's their country; let's explore our own. I'm not talking about sex; that's a whole other universe, where every man and woman is on their own. I'm talking about society, the so-called man's world of institutionalized competition, aggression, violence, authority, and power. 嗯，我们已经是异乡人了。作为女性，我们在很大程度上被排除在这个社会自封的男性规范之外，在这个社会里，人类被称为"Man"，唯一值得尊敬的神是男性，唯一的方向是向上。那是他们的国家；让我们去探索我们自己的国家。我不是在谈论性；那是另一个完全不同的宇宙，每个男人和女人都要独自面对。我在谈论社会，所谓的男人世界——制度化的竞争、侵略、暴力、权威和权力。
If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn't made by us or for us; we can't even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you'll have a hard time getting it off. 如果我们想作为女性生活，某种程度的分离主义是被迫加在我们身上的：米尔斯学院就是这种分离主义的明智体现。那个战争游戏的世界不是我们创造的，也不是为我们创造的；我们甚至无法不戴面具就在那里呼吸。而一旦戴上了面具，你就很难再摘下来了。
So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy -- that's their game. Not against men, either -- that's still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that's our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms? 那么，为什么不继续按我们自己的方式做事呢，就像你们在米尔斯学院某种程度上已经做到的那样？不为男人和男性权力等级制度——那是他们的游戏。也不反对男人——那仍然是按他们的规则行事。而是与所有和我们站在一起的男人一起：那是我们的游戏。一个受过大学教育的自由女性，为什么要与"大男子主义"作斗争或为他服务？为什么她要按他的条件过自己的生活？
Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean -- the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. 大男子主义害怕我们的条件，因为我们的条件并不都是理性的、积极的、竞争性的等等。所以他教会我们鄙视和否认这些条件。在我们的社会中，女性一直生活在——并且因为生活在——生活的整个阴暗面而受到鄙视：包括无助、脆弱和疾病，包括非理性和无法挽回的一切，包括所有晦涩的、被动的、不受控制的、动物的、不洁的东西——死亡的阴影之谷，深渊，生命的深处。
All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can't play doctor, only nurse, can't be warriors, only civilians, can't be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers' tales about it, we haven't got there yet. 战士所否认和拒绝的一切都留给了我们和与我们分享这些的男人，因此，和我们一样，他们不能做医生，只能做护士；不能做战士，只能做平民；不能做首领，只能做印第安人。那么，那就是我们的国家。我们国家的黑夜面。如果它有白天面——高高的山脉、长满青草的草原——我们只知道开拓者的传说，我们还没有到达那里。
We're never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country. 模仿大男子主义永远无法让我们到达那里。我们只有走自己的路，在那里生活，在我们自己国家的黑夜里生活，才能到达那里。
So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do your work there, whatever you're good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it's second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they're going to give you equal pay for equal time. 所以我对你们的希望是，你们在那里生活，不是作为囚犯，不为身为女性而羞愧，不是一个病态社会体系的自愿俘虏，而是作为本地人。希望你们在那里安居乐业，经营自己的家，做自己的主人，有自己的房间。希望你们在那里做自己的工作，无论你们擅长什么——艺术、科学、技术、经营公司或打扫床铺——当他们告诉你因为是女人在做所以是二等工作时，希望你们告诉他们去死，而在他们去的时候，希望你们争取同工同酬。
I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. 希望你们生活中不需要支配他人，也不需要被他人支配。希望你们永远不是受害者，但也希望你们不对他人拥有权力。当你们失败、被击败、痛苦、身处黑暗时，希望你们记住黑暗是你们的国家，是你们生活的地方，那里没有战争，也没有胜利，但那里有未来。
Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing -- instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls. 我们的根在黑暗中；大地是我们的家园。为什么我们要向上寻找祝福——而不是环顾四周，向下寻找？我们拥有的希望就在那里。不在布满轨道间谍卫星和武器的天空中，而在我们俯视的大地中。不是从上方，而是从下方。不是在刺眼的光芒中，而是在滋养万物的黑暗中，人类在那里生长出人类的灵魂。