First Inaugural Address -- Thomas Woodrow Wilson

There has been a change of government.

政府发生了更迭。

It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority.

它始于两年前，当时民主党以决定性多数当选众议院。

It has now been completed.

现在已经完成了。

The Senate about to assemble will also be Democratic.

即将召开的参议院也将是民主党的。

The offices of President and Vice-President have been put into the hands of Democrats.

总统和副总统的职位已交由民主党人掌握。

What does the change mean?

这一变化意味着什么？

That is the question that is uppermost in our minds to-day.

这是我们今天最关心的问题。

That is the question I am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion.

这就是我将尝试回答的问题，以便（如果可以的话）解释这一场合。

It means much more than the mere success of a party.

这不仅仅意味着一个政党的成功。

The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose.

一个政党的成功没有什么意义，除非国家利用该政党来实现一个宏大而明确的目标。

No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party.

没有人会误解国家现在寻求利用民主党的目的。

It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

它试图用它来解释自己的计划和观点的变化。

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.

一些我们已经熟悉的旧事物，已经开始渗透到我们的思想和生活的习惯中，当我们后来用新的、觉醒的眼光批判性地审视它们时，它们的面貌已经改变了；他们卸下了伪装，表现出外星人和险恶的样子。

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.

有些新事物，当我们坦率地看待它们，愿意理解它们的真实特征时，已经开始呈现出我们长期相信和熟悉的事物的一面，即我们自己的信念。

We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life.

我们对自己的生活有了新的认识，这让我们精神焕发。

We see that in many things that life is very great.

我们在很多事情上看到生活是非常伟大的。

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.

它在物质方面、在其财富总量、在其能源的多样性和广泛性、在由个人的天才和人类群体的无限事业构思和建立的工业方面都是无与伦比的伟大。

It is great, also, very great, in its moral force.

它的道德力量也非常伟大。

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.

世界上没有其他地方的高尚男女在努力纠正错误、减轻痛苦、为弱者带来力量和希望的过程中，以更引人注目的形式表现出同情、帮助和劝告的美丽和能量。

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.

此外，我们还建立了一个伟大的政府体系，它已经存在了很长一段时间，在许多方面为那些寻求将自由建立在能够抵御偶然变化、风暴和事故的基础上的人们树立了榜样。

Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance.

我们的生活包含着一切伟大的事物，而且包含着丰富的内容。

But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded.

但恶与善并存，很多精金都被腐蚀了。

With riches has come inexcusable waste.

财富的同时也带来了不可原谅的浪费。

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.

我们已经浪费掉了大部分本来可以利用的东西，并且没有停下来保护大自然的无限恩赐，没有大自然，我们的进取精神就会变得毫无价值和无能，蔑视谨慎，可耻的挥霍和令人钦佩的效率。

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.

我们一直为我们的工业成就感到自豪，但迄今为止，我们还没有停下来足够深思熟虑地计算人类的代价，生命被扼杀的代价，能源过度负担和破坏的代价，以及这些年来无情地压在男人、女人和儿童身上的可怕的身体和精神代价。

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.

这一切的呻吟和痛苦还没有传到我们的耳中，这是我们生活中庄严、动人的基调，从矿山和工厂，从每一个有过斗争的家庭。

With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes.

伟大的政府留下了许多深藏不露的秘密，我们拖延太久，无法用坦率、无畏的眼睛去调查和审查。

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.

我们所热爱的伟大政府常常被用于私人和自私的目的，而那些利用它的人却忘记了人民。

At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole.

最后，我们对整个生活有了一个愿景。

We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital.

我们在好的事物中看到坏的事物，在健全的和充满活力的事物中看到堕落和颓废。

With this vision we approach new affairs.

带着这个愿景，我们着手新的事务。

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.

我们的责任是净化、重新考虑、恢复、纠正邪恶而不损害善良，净化和人性化我们共同生活的每一个过程，而不削弱或感伤它。

There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great.

在我们急于成功和伟大的过程中，存在着一些粗鲁、无情和无情的东西。

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.

我们的想法是“让每个人照顾自己，让每一代人照顾自己”，而我们却建立了巨大的机器，使得除了那些站在控制杆上的人之外的任何人都不可能有机会照顾自己。

We had not forgotten our morals.

我们没有忘记我们的道德。

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.

我们清楚地记得，我们制定了一项政策，旨在为最卑微的人和最有权势的人服务，着眼于正义和公平竞争的标准，并自豪地记住它。

But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great.

但我们非常粗心，急于求成。

5 We have come now to the sober second thought.

5 现在我们要进行冷静的第二个思考。

The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes.

粗心的鳞片已经从我们的眼睛里掉下来了。

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.

我们下定决心，将我们国家生活的每一个过程重新与我们一开始自豪地制定并始终铭记在心的标准相一致。

Our work is a work of restoration.

我们的工作是修复工作。

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; 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; 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, un-regarded waste heaps at every mine.

我们已经在一定程度上具体列出了应该改变的事情，以下是一些主要项目： 关税使我们无法在世界贸易中发挥应有的作用，违反了税收的公正原则，并使政府成为私人利益手中的便利工具；五十年前基于政府出售债券的必要性而建立的银行和货币体系，完全适合集中现金和限制信贷；从金融和行政的各个方面来看，工业体系将资本控制在主导地位，限制自由和劳动机会，并且在不更新或保护国家自然资源的情况下进行剥削；农业活动的主体尚未获得伟大商业事业的效率，也从未通过直接应用于农场的科学手段发挥其应有的作用，或者提供最适合其实际需要的信贷便利；水道未开发，废弃地未开垦，森林无人照管，在没有计划或更新前景的情况下迅速消失，每个矿井都有无人理会的废物堆。

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.

我们进行了研究，因为也许没有其他国家拥有最有效的生产资料，但我们没有像我们作为工业组织者、政治家或个人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.

我们也没有研究和完善政府为人类服务的手段，以保障国家的健康、男人、女人和儿童的健康，以及他们在生存斗争中的权利。

This is no sentimental duty.

这不是情感上的责任。

The firm basis of government is justice, not pity.

政府的坚实基础是正义，而不是怜悯。

These are matters of justice.

这些都是正义问题。

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.

如果男人、女人和儿童的生命和活力得不到保护，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的影响，那么就不可能有平等或机会，这是政治体正义的首要要素。

Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts.

社会必须确保它本身不会压垮、削弱或损害其自身的组成部分。

The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves.

法律的首要职责是保持其所服务的社会的健全。

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.

卫生法、纯净食品法以及个人无力自行决定的决定劳动条件的法律是正义和法律效率事务的密切组成部分。

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.

这些是我们应该做的一些事情，而不是让其他事情悬而未决，这是对财产和个人权利的老式的、不容忽视的基本保护。

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.

这是新时代的崇高事业：将与我们作为一个国家的生活有关的一切提升到从每个人的良心和正义愿景的炉火中闪耀出来的光芒中。

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.

作为游击队员，我们这样做是不可思议的；我们不可能在不了解事实的情况下或盲目仓促地这样做。

We shall restore, not destroy.

我们将恢复，而不是破坏。

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; 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.

我们将按其现状和可能修改的情况来处理我们的经济体系，而不是像我们有一张白纸可以书写时那样；我们将一步一步地使它成为应有的样子，本着那些质疑自己的智慧并寻求建议和知识的人的精神，而不是浅薄的自我满足或他们无法说出的短途旅行的兴奋。

Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto.

正义，只有正义，永远是我们的座右铭。

And yet it will be no cool process of mere science.

然而，这不仅仅是一个很酷的科学过程。

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.

国家已经被深深地搅动了，被一种庄严的激情所搅动，被错误的知识、失去的理想、政府经常放荡并成为邪恶的工具所搅动。

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.

我们面对这个充满权利和机会的新时代时，我们的感受像上帝亲自临在的空气一样掠过我们的心弦，正义与怜悯相调和，法官与弟兄合而为一。

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.

我们知道，我们的任务不仅仅是政治任务，而是一项彻底审视我们的任务，我们是否能够了解我们的时代和人民的需要，我们是否真正成为他们的代言人和解释者，我们是否有纯洁的理解之心和正确的意志来选择我们的崇高行动方针。

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication.

这不是一个胜利的日子；而是一个胜利的日子。这是奉献的一天。

Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity.

这里聚集的不是政党的力量，而是人类的力量。

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.

人们的心等待着我们；男人的生命悬而未决；人们的希望要求我们说出我们将做什么。

Who shall live up to the great trust?

谁不辜负重托？

Who dares fail to try?

谁敢尝试失败？

I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side.

我召唤所有诚实的人、所有爱国的、所有有远见的人，都站在我一边。

God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me!

愿上帝帮助我，只要他们愿意劝告和支持我，我就不会辜负他们！

U.S. Copyright Status : Text and Image = Public domain.

美国版权状态：文本和图像 = 公共领域。

� Copyright 2001-Present.

� 版权所有 2001 年至今。

American Rhetoric.

美国修辞学。

HTML transcription by Joseph Fried.

HTML 转录由 Joseph Fried 编写。