There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be Democratic. The offices of President and Vice-President have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean? That is the question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion. 政府已经发生了更迭。这一变化始于两年前，当时众议院以决定性的多数成为民主党占多数。如今这一变化已经完成。即将召集的参议院也将由民主党占多数。总统和副总统的职位已交到民主党人手中。这一变化意味着什么？这是今天我们心中最迫切的问题。这就是我要试图回答的问题，如果可以的话，以此来诠释这个时刻。
It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view. 它的意义远不止一个政党的胜利。一个政党的胜利意义不大，除非国家在利用这个政党实现一个宏大而明确的目标。没有人会误解国家现在寻求利用民主党的目的。它是要利用它来诠释自身计划和观点的改变。
Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life. 一些我们早已熟悉、已经开始渗入我们思想和生活习惯中的旧事物，当我们近来以全新觉醒的眼光批判地审视它们时，已经改变了面貌；它们褪去了伪装，显露出陌生和险恶的本质。一些新事物，当我们坦率地审视它们、愿意理解其真实本质时，开始呈现出我们长久以来信仰和熟悉的事物的面貌，成为我们自己信念的一部分。我们对自身生活有了新的洞察，感到焕然一新。
We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men. 我们看到，在许多方面，生活是极其伟大的。在物质方面，在财富总量上，在能量的多样性和广度上，在由个人天赋和群体无限进取心所构想和建立的工业中，它是无与伦比的伟大。
It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. 在道德力量方面，它同样伟大，非常伟大。在世界其他任何地方，高尚的男男女女都没有以如此引人注目的形式展现出同情、互助和忠告的美与力量，他们努力纠正错误、减轻苦难、使弱者走上力量和希望之路。
We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance. 此外，我们还建立了一个伟大的政府体制，它经历了漫长的岁月，在许多方面成为那些寻求将自由建立在能够抵御偶然变化、风暴和意外的根基之上的人的楷模。我们的生活包含一切伟大的事物，并且丰富地包含着它们。
But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. 但邪恶随美好而来，许多纯金被腐蚀了。伴随财富而来的是不可原谅的浪费。我们挥霍了本可使用的大部分，却没有停下来保护大自然的慷慨恩赐——没有它，我们进取的天赋将毫无价值、无能为力——我们不屑于谨慎，既令人钦佩地高效，也可耻地挥霍。
We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. 我们一直为工业成就感到自豪，但迄今为止我们还没有足够深思熟虑地停下来计算人的代价——被扼杀的生命、被过度消耗和摧毁的精力的代价，以及那些多年来无情地承受着这一切沉重负担和压力的男男女女和孩子们所付出的可怕的身心代价。这一切的呻吟和痛苦还没有传到我们耳中——我们生活中那庄严而动人的低音，从矿山和工厂中传出，从每一个斗争有其亲密而熟悉位置的家中传出。
With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people. 伟大的政府伴随着许多深层隐秘的事物，我们太久延迟了以坦诚无畏的眼光来审视它们。我们所热爱的伟大政府太经常被用于私人和自私的目的，而使用它的人已经忘记了人民。
At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. 终于，我们获得了一种审视我们生活整体的视野。我们看到了美好中的丑恶，看到了衰败颓废中的健全活力。带着这种视野，我们着手处理新的事务。我们的责任是清洗、反思、恢复、纠正邪恶而不损害美好，净化和人性化我们共同生活的每一个过程，而不削弱或感伤化它。
There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves. 在我们急于成功和伟大的过程中，存在着某种粗鲁、冷酷和无情的东西。我们的想法一直是"让每个人为自己打算，让每一代人为自己打算"，而我们却建造了庞大的机器，使除了那些站在控制杠杆旁的人之外，任何人都无法有机会为自己打算。
We had not forgotten our morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy which was meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with an eye single to the standards of justice and fair play, and remembered it with pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great. 我们并没有忘记我们的道德。我们清楚地记得，我们制定了一项旨在为最卑微者和最有权势者服务的政策，一心着眼于正义和公平竞争的标准，并为此感到自豪。但我们非常粗心，急于求成。
We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration. 现在我们进入了冷静的再思考。疏忽的鳞片从我们眼中落下。我们已下定决心，使我们国家生活的每一个过程重新符合我们在开端时自豪地确立并始终铭记于心的标准。我们的工作是一项恢复的工作。
We have itemized with some degree of particularity the things that ought to be altered and here are some of the chief items: A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world, violates the just principles of taxation, and makes the Government a facile instrument in the hand of private interests; a banking and currency system based upon the necessity of the Government to sell its bonds fifty years ago and perfectly adapted to concentrating cash and restricting credits. 我们相当详细地列举了应该改变的事物，以下是一些主要项目：一项将我们与世界商业中应有部分隔绝的关税，违反了公正的税收原则，使政府成为私人利益手中的顺从工具；一个基于五十年前政府出售债券之必要性的银行和货币体系，完全适应于集中现金和限制信贷。
An industrial system which, take it on all its sides, financial as well as administrative, holds capital in leading strings, restricts the liberties and limits the opportunities of labor, and exploits without renewing or conserving the natural resources of the country; 一个工业体系，从其各个方面——财务和行政——来看，用缰绳束缚资本，限制劳动的自由和机会，并在不更新或保护国家自然资源的情况下进行剥削；
a body of agricultural activities never yet given the efficiency of great business undertakings or served as it should be through the instrumentality of science taken directly to the farm, or afforded the facilities of credit best suited to its practical needs; watercourses undeveloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests untended, fast disappearing without plan or prospect of renewal, unregarded waste heaps at every mine. 一系列农业活动，从未获得大企业那样的效率，也没有通过直接将科学应用于农场来得到应有的服务，或获得最适合其实际需要的信贷设施；水道未开发，荒地未开垦，森林无人照料，在没有计划或更新前景的情况下迅速消失，每个矿山都有无人理会的废料堆。
We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or as individuals. 也许没有哪个国家像我们这样研究了最有效的生产手段，但无论作为工业组织者、政治家还是个人，我们都没有像应该的那样研究成本或经济。
Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of the Nation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well as their rights in the struggle for existence. This is no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are matters of justice. 我们也没有研究和完善使政府能够为人类服务的手段，以保护国家的健康，保护其男人、女人和儿童的健康，以及他们在生存斗争中的权利。这不是感伤的义务。政府的坚实基础是正义，而非怜悯。这些是正义的问题。
There can be no equality or opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not alter, control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. 如果男男女女和儿童的生活、他们的生命力不能得到保护，免受他们无法改变、控制或单独应对的巨大工业和社会进程后果的影响，就不可能有平等或机会——而平等或机会是政治体中正义的首要要素。社会必须确保它不会自身压碎、削弱或损害其组成部分。
The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency. 法律的首要职责是保持其所服务的社会健全。卫生法、纯净食品法以及决定个人无力自行决定的劳动条件的法律，是正义和法律效率这一事业本身的组成部分。
These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's conscience and vision of the right. 这些是我们应该做的一些事情，同时不要忽略其他事情——那些老式的、永远不可忽视的、对财产和个人权利的基本保护。这是新时代的崇高事业：将涉及我们国家生活的一切提升到每个人良知的炉火和正义愿景所散发的光芒之中。
It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; 我们作为党派分子来做这件事是不可想象的；在对事实真相无知或盲目匆忙中来做这件事也是不可想象的。我们将恢复，而不是破坏。我们将以其现状和可能被修改的形式来处理我们的经济体系，而不是以我们有一张白纸可以书写时的样子；
and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto. 我们将逐步使它成为它应该是的样子，本着质疑自身智慧、寻求忠告和知识的精神，而非浅薄的自满或不知通往何方的冒险的兴奋。正义，唯有正义，将永远是我们的座右铭。
And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil. 然而，这不会是一个仅仅由冷静科学完成的过程。国家已被深深触动，被一种庄严的激情所触动，被对错误的认识、对失去理想的痛惜、对政府太经常被败坏并成为邪恶工具的愤慨所触动。
The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politics but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action. 我们面对这个权利和机会的新时代时的感受，如同来自上帝面前的某种气息拂过我们的心弦，在那里正义与仁慈和解，法官与兄弟合而为一。我们深知我们的任务绝非单纯的政治任务，而是一个将彻查我们自身的任务——我们是否能够理解我们的时代和人民的需要，我们是否确实是他们的代言人和诠释者，我们是否有纯洁的心去理解，是否有端正的意志去选择我们崇高的行动路线。
This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me! 这不是胜利的日子，而是奉献的日子。在这里集结的不是政党的力量，而是人性的力量。人们的心灵在等待着我们；人们的生命悬于一线；人们的希望呼唤着我们说出我们将做什么。谁将不负这一崇高信托？谁敢不去尝试？我召唤所有诚实的人、所有爱国的人、所有具有前瞻眼光的人到我身边。上帝助我，如果他们愿意忠告和支持我，我将不会辜负他们！