[中英文演讲稿]杰夫·胡贝尔在伊利诺伊大学香槟分校2016年毕业典礼上的演讲-find a better way

near the middle and completely stuck. Up to the top of my boots. Cow poop threatening to seep over the top. Not quite able to get them out. I yelled for help, but no one could hear me except the cows. And they didn’t really seem interested.

我每走一步都越陷越深，直到走到中间时已经完全不能动弹。牛粪已经淹没过我靴子的顶部，我无法拔出双脚。我开始大喊寻求帮助，但是除了奶牛没人能听到。显然它们看起来并没有兴趣。

I started to panic a little, but then a remarkable calm came over me. It was very Zen. I saw my future: it was filled with cow manure.

我开始有点惊慌，但又突然冷静下来。当时我头脑一片空白，仿佛看到了我的未来：被牛粪“淹没”。

Don’t get me wrong. Farming is a worthy and noble way of life, if you’re passionate about it. But it was in that moment I knew I would need to find my purpose elsewhere.

别误会。在农场工作是一种有价值又高尚的生活方式，只要你对它有足够的热情。但那一刻我知道我的志向并不在此。

For me, there had to be a better way to find fulfillment and a different future, and that meant going to college. My parents

believed in education, but they could only afford to pay for the first year of college. After that, it was up to me.

对我来说，有一条更好的路实现自我价值和追逐更好的未来，那就是去上大学。我的父母重视教育，但他们只能付得起我第一年的学费。之后，我必须靠自己。

At the time, I had an uncle and a much-older brother who were both working in accounting jobs in “the big city,” Chicago. I thought their work with then-cutting-edge computer programs was impossibly cool, so I started lobbying my parents for a computer.

当时，我的一个叔叔和哥哥都在大城市芝加哥做会计工作。我觉得他们对着计算机程序工作实在是太酷了，于是我开始游说我的父母给我买电脑。

An Apple II at the time was about $3,500?—?about the equivalent of one year’s earnings on the farm. But my mother used her inheritance from my godfather, all of it, and bought me that computer.

当时的一台二代苹果电脑大约需要3,500美金，相当于农场一年的收入。但我妈妈还是用我监护人留下的全部遗产，给我买了那台电脑。

Being a precocious kid, I wasn’t happy enough to just use it. I had to take it apart, and “soup it up.” My parents were horrified. For me, the problem wasn’t putting it back together; it was that I needed storage. I needed floppy disks, lots of them.

作为一个过早懂事的孩子，我并不满足于单纯使用电脑。我需要把它拆分开，然后再重新组装。这可把我的父母吓坏了。对我来说，头疼的并不是要将它按原装组装好，而是存储问题。我需要很多的软盘。

Floppy disks were the thumb drives of the 1980s, except it would take over 7,000 floppy disks, or a stack 50 feet high, and cost $35,000, to equal the storage in a one gigabyte thumb drive you buy for 3 bucks today, and easily fits in your pocket. Technology is really damn cool.

软盘就是20世纪80年代的U盘，只不过它相当于7000张软盘，堆积起来有50英尺高，花费35，000美元，储存容量相当于你今天花3美元买的一个1GB易携带的U盘。科技真是酷毙了。

But, the nearest computer dealer was 15 miles away, and a box of disks cost about 10 weeks’ worth of my allowance for doing farm chores.

但是，最近的电脑销售商在15英里以外，而且一盒磁盘的价格相当于我干10周农活的收入。

There had to be a better way. 一定会有更好的方法。

So my brother helped me find a distributor in Chicago where I could buy them at wholesale for myself. Then I took out ads in some very geeky computer magazines, “Byte” and “Nibble” magazines, to sell to others.

我的兄弟帮我找到了一个芝加哥的分销商，我可以在那里批发。于是我就在一些异常火爆的电脑杂志上登广告售卖，比如“Byte” 和“Nibble”等杂志。

I was a budding 14-year-old entrepreneur. I added other computer products over time and taught myself how to code. I bootstrapped the business out of my farmhouse bedroom into one of the first mail-order computer product companies in the country.

我是一个14岁初露锋芒的创业者。不久之后，我增售了其他的电脑产品，并自学了如何编程序。我依靠自己的力量将事业搬出了农场的卧室，成立了国内第一个邮购计算机产品的公司。

And that’s how I created Amazon.com.