"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free." That's what President Lincoln once wrote. "Honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." "赋予奴隶自由，就是保障自由人的自由。"林肯总统曾这样写道。"我们所给予的和我们所捍卫的，同样值得尊敬。我们要么高尚地拯救，要么卑劣地失去这地球上最后、最美好的希望。"
Mr. Speaker, leaders and members of both parties, distinguished guests: We gather here to commemorate a century and a half of freedom -- not simply for former slaves, but for all of us. 议长先生，两党领袖和议员们，尊敬的来宾们：我们聚集在此，纪念一个半世纪以来的自由——不仅是为了曾经的奴隶，也是为了我们所有人。
Today, the issue of chattel slavery seems so simple, so obvious -- it is wrong in every sense. Stealing men, women, and children from their homelands. Tearing husband from wife, parent from child; stripped and sold to the highest bidder; shackled in chains and bloodied with the whip. It's antithetical not only to our conception of human rights and dignity, but to our conception of ourselves -- a people founded on the premise that all are created equal. 今天，动产奴隶制的问题似乎如此简单、如此显而易见——它在任何意义上都是错误的。将男人、女人和孩子从他们的家园掳走。让夫妻离散、骨肉分离；被剥光衣服卖给出价最高的人；被铁链锁住，被鞭子抽打得鲜血淋漓。这不仅与我们对人权和尊严的理念背道而驰，也与我们对自身的认知格格不入——我们这个民族建立在人人生而平等的前提之上。
And, to many at the time, that judgment was clear as well. Preachers, black and white, railed against this moral outrage from the pulpit. Former slaves rattled the conscience of Americans in books, in pamphlets, and speeches. Men and women organized anti-slavery conventions and fundraising drives. Farmers and shopkeepers opened their barns, their homes, their cellars as waystations on an Underground Railroad, where African Americans often risked their own freedom to ensure the freedom of others. 而在当时，许多人也清楚地认识到了这一点。黑人和白人的传教士们在布道坛上痛斥这种道德暴行。曾经的奴隶们通过书籍、小册子和演讲震撼了美国人的良知。男男女女组织起反奴隶制大会和筹款活动。农民和店主将他们的谷仓、房屋、地窖作为地下铁路的中转站，非裔美国人常常冒着失去自身自由的风险去换取他人的自由。
And enslaved Americans, with no rights of their own, they ran north and kept the flame of freedom burning, passing it from one generation to the next, with their faith, and their dignity, and their song. 而那些自身毫无权利的被奴役的美国人，他们逃往北方，让自由之火不灭，用他们的信仰、尊严和歌声，将自由从一代传递到下一代。
The reformers' passion only drove the protectors of the status quo to dig in harder. And for decades, America wrestled with the issue of slavery in a way that we have with no other, before or since. It shaped our politics, and it nearly tore us asunder. Tensions ran so high, so personal, that at one point, a lawmaker was beaten unconscious on the Senate floor. Eventually, war broke out -- brother against brother, North against South. 改革者的激情只会让现状的维护者更加顽固。数十年来，美国在奴隶制问题上的挣扎，是前所未有的，也是后无来者的。它塑造了我们的政治，几乎将我们撕裂。紧张局势如此激烈，如此针对个人，以至于有一次，一名议员在参议院议场上被打得不省人事。最终，战争爆发了——兄弟阋墙，南北对立。
At its heart, the question of slavery was never simply about civil rights. It was about the meaning of America, the kind of country we wanted to be -- whether this nation might fulfill the call of its birth: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," that among those are life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 从根本上说，奴隶制问题从来不仅仅关乎民权。它关乎美国的意义，关乎我们想要成为什么样的国家——关乎这个国家能否履行其诞生时的召唤："我们认为这些真理不言而喻：人人生而平等，造物主赋予他们若干不可剥夺的权利，"其中包括生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。
President Lincoln understood that if we were ever to fully realize that founding promise, it meant not just signing an Emancipation Proclamation, not just winning a war. It meant making the most powerful collective statement we can in our democracy: etching our values into our Constitution. He called it "a King's cure for all the evils." 林肯总统明白，如果我们要真正实现那一建国承诺，不仅仅意味着签署一份《解放黑人奴隶宣言》，不仅仅意味着赢得一场战争。它意味着在我们的民主制度中做出我们所能做出的最强有力的集体声明：将我们的价值观铭刻在宪法之中。他称之为"根治一切弊病的良方"。
A hundred and fifty years proved the cure to be necessary but not sufficient. Progress proved halting, too often deferred. Newly freed slaves may have been liberated by the letter of the law, but their daily lives told another tale. They couldn't vote. They couldn't fill most occupations. They couldn't protect themselves or their families from indignity or from violence. 一百五十年的历史证明，这剂良方是必要的，但还不够。进步步履蹒跚，常常被推迟。新近获得自由的奴隶或许在法律条文中得到了解放，但他们的日常生活却是另一番景象。他们不能投票。他们无法从事大多数职业。他们无法保护自己和家人免受侮辱或暴力。
And so abolitionists and freedmen and women and radical Republicans kept cajoling and kept rabble-rousing, and within a few years of the war's end at Appomattox, we passed two more amendments guaranteeing voting rights, birthright citizenship, equal protection under the law. 因此，废奴主义者、获得自由的男女以及激进共和党人不断呼吁、不断鼓动，在阿波马托克斯战争结束后的几年内，我们又通过了两项修正案，保障投票权、出生公民权和法律面前的平等保护。
And still, it wasn't enough. For another century, we saw segregation and Jim Crow make a mockery of these amendments. And we saw justice turn a blind eye to mobs with nooses slung over trees. We saw bullets and bombs terrorize generations. 但这仍然不够。在接下来的一个世纪里，我们看到种族隔离和吉姆·克劳法将这些修正案嘲弄于股掌之间。我们看到正义对那些将绞索挂在树上的暴民视而不见。我们看到子弹和炸弹让几代人生活在恐惧之中。
And yet, through all this, the call to freedom survived. "We hold these truths to be self-evident." And eventually, a new generation rose up to march and organize, and to stand up and to sit in with the moral force of nonviolence and the sweet sound of those same freedom songs that slaves had sung so long ago -- crying out not for special treatment, but for equal rights; calling out for basic justice promised to them almost a century before. 然而，历经这一切，自由的呼唤从未消逝。"我们认为这些真理不言而喻。"最终，新一代人站了出来，他们游行、组织、挺身反抗、静坐示威，以非暴力的道德力量和奴隶们许久以前吟唱过的那些自由之歌的美妙旋律——他们不要求特殊待遇，只要求平等权利；只要求近一个世纪前就向他们承诺的基本正义。
Like their abolitionist predecessors, they were plain, humble, ordinary people, armed with little but faith: Faith in the Almighty. Faith in each other. And faith in America. Hope in the face so often of all evidence to the contrary, that something better lay around the bend. 正如他们的废奴主义前辈一样，他们是朴素、谦逊的普通人，几乎一无所有，唯有信仰：对全能上帝的信仰。对彼此的信仰。以及对美国的信仰。在屡屡面对种种相反证据时，依然怀抱希望——相信更好的事物就在前方。
Because of them -- maids and porters and students and farmers and priests and housewives -- because of them, a Civil Rights law was passed, and the Voting Rights law was signed. And doors of opportunity swung open, not just for the black porter, but also for the white chambermaid, and the immigrant dishwasher, so that their daughters and their sons might finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else's laundry or shining somebody else's shoes. Freedom for you and for me. Freedom for all of us. 因为他们——女佣、搬运工、学生、农民、牧师和家庭主妇——因为他们，民权法案得以通过，投票权法案得以签署。机遇之门敞开了，不仅是为了黑人搬运工，也是为了白人女侍者，为了移民洗碗工，这样他们的女儿和儿子终于可以想象一种不必再为他人洗衣擦鞋的生活。你我的自由。我们所有人的自由。
And that's what we celebrate today. The long arc of progress. Progress that is never assured, never guaranteed, but always possible, always there to be earned -- no matter how stuck we might seem sometimes. No matter how divided or despairing we may appear. No matter what ugliness may bubble up. Progress, so long as we're willing to push for it; so long as we're willing to reach for each other. 这就是我们今天所要庆祝的。进步的漫长弧线。进步从非必然，从无保障，但始终是可能的，始终值得我们去争取——无论我们有时看起来多么停滞不前。无论我们显得多么分裂或绝望。无论多么丑陋的事物可能浮出水面。只要我们愿意推动进步，只要我们愿意彼此伸手，进步就会到来。
We would do a disservice to those warriors of justice -- Tubman, and Douglass, and Lincoln, and King -- were we to deny that the scars of our nation's original sin are still with us today. We condemn ourselves to shackles once more if we fail to answer those who wonder if they're truly equals in their communities, or in their justice systems, or in a job interview. We betray the efforts of the past if we fail to push back against bigotry in all its forms. 如果我们否认这个国家原罪的伤疤至今仍在，那就是对那些正义斗士——塔布曼、道格拉斯、林肯和金——的不敬。如果我们不能回应那些质疑自己在社区中、在司法体系中、在求职面试中是否真正平等的人，我们就是在将自己重新锁入镣铐。如果我们不能抵制一切形式的偏见，我们就是在背叛过去的努力。
But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. 但如果我们否认前进的可能、进步的可能，如果我们让犬儒主义吞噬我们、让恐惧压倒我们，我们同样是在背叛我们最崇高的过去。如果我们失去了希望。因为无论多么缓慢，无论多么不完整，无论在我们旅程的每一步遭到多么严厉、多么喧嚣、多么粗暴的挑战，在美国，我们都能创造我们所寻求的变革。
All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else's child. 我们只需要这一代人愿意像前人一样去做：超越犬儒，超越恐惧，坚守我们的价值观，在彼此身上看到自己，不仅为自己的孩子，也为他人的孩子珍惜尊严和机遇。
To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -- regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. 记住，我们的自由与他人的自由紧密相连——无论他们长相如何、来自何方、姓氏是什么、信仰什么宗教。我们所给予的和我们所捍卫的，同样值得尊敬。要么高尚地拯救，要么卑劣地失去这地球上最后、最美好的希望。要么高尚地拯救，要么卑劣地失去这地球上最后、最美好的希望。
That is our choice. Today, we affirm hope. Thank you. God bless you. 这就是我们的选择。今天，我们肯定希望。谢谢你们。上帝保佑你们。
May God bless the United States of America. 愿上帝保佑美利坚合众国。