再会了！你们的母校眼睁睁地要看(8)你们十年之后成什么器。

Never Give Up the Pursuit of Learning

Hu Shih

Dear students of the Graduating Class,

As you are leaving your alma mater, I have nothing to offer you as a gift except a word of advice.

My advice is, “Never give up the pursuit of learning.” You have perhaps finished your college courses mostly for obtaining the diploma, or, in other words, out of sheer necessity. However, from now you are free to follow your own bent in the choice of studies. While you are in the prime of life, why not devote yourselves to a special field of study? Youth will soon be gone never to return. And it will be too late for you to go into scholarship when in your declining years. Knowledge will do you a good turn even as a means of subsistence. If you give up studies while holding a job, you will in a couple of years have had yourselves replaced by younger people. It will then be too late to remedy the situation by picking up studies again.

Some people say, “Once you have a job, you’ll come up against the urgent problem of making a living. How can you manage to find time to study? Even if you want to, will it be possible with no library or no laboratory available?”

Now let me tell you this. Those who refuse to study for lack of a library will most probably continue to do so even though there is a library. And those who refuse to do research for lack of a laboratory will most probably continue to do so even though a laboratory is available. As long as you set your mind on studies, you will naturally cut down on food and clothing to buy books or do everything possible to acquire necessary instruments.

Time is no object. Charles Darwin could only work one hour a day due to ill health. Yet what a remarkable man he was! If you spend one hour a day reading 10 pages of a book, you can finish more than 3600 pages a year, and 110000 pages in 30 years.

Dear students, 110000 pages will be quite enough to make a learned man of man. It will take you one hour to read three tabloids a day, and one and half hours to finish four rounds of mah-jong a day. Reading tabloids, playing mah-jong or striving to be a learned man, the choice lies with you.

Henrik Ibsen says, “it is your supreme duty to cast yourself into a useful implement.” Learning is the casting mould. Forsake learning, and you will ruin yourself.

Farewell! Your alma mater is watching eagerly to see what will become of you ten years from now.

注释：

本文是胡适1928-1930年在上海任中国公学校长时为毕业生所作赠言，至今仍有参考价值。

(1)“不要抛弃学问”在这里的意思是“不要放弃对学问的追求”，因此不能直译为Never Give up Learning，必须加字：Never Give up the Pursuit of Learning。

(2)“你们可以依自己的心愿去自由研究了”译为you are free to follow your personal bent in the choice of studies，其中to follow one’s bent 是成语，和to follow one’s inclination同义，作“做自己感兴趣或爱做的事”解。

(3)“做学问”译为to go into scholarship, 等于to engage in learning。

(4)“学问决不会辜负人的”译为Knowledge will do you a good turn，其中to do one a good turn 是成语，作“做对某人有益的事”解.

(5) “撙衣节食”即“省吃省穿”，现译为 cut down on food and clothing, 其中 to cut down on 是成语，与 to economize on 同义，作“节约”解。又，上语也可译为 to live frugally。

(6)“至于时间，更不成问题”译为Time is no object,其中no object是成语，等于no problem，作“不成问题”或“不在话下”解。

(7)“全靠你们自己的选择”译为the choice lies with you或it is up to you to make the choice。

(8)“你们的母校眼睁睁地要看……”中的“眼睁睁地”通常的意思是“无可奈何地”，现在这里作“热切地”解，故译为eagerly。

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