摘要：Though most of you attending this afternoon are incoming undergraduate students, the ceremony also welcomes graduate students, col
Please let me begin by saying once again, what a pleasure it is to welcome you to Princeton.
请允许我再次表达，欢迎你们来到普林斯顿是多么令人高兴的事情。
Today, is one of my favorite days of the calendar.
今天是我日历上最喜欢的日子之一。
It's our New Year's Day, a moment when Princeton starts fresh.
这是我们的元旦，普林斯顿大学迎来全新开始的时刻。
Though most of you attending this afternoon are incoming undergraduate students, the ceremony also welcomes graduate students, colleagues on the faculty, and staff, and everybody who returns to campus to begin another academic year.
虽然今天下午在场的大多数是即将入学的本科生，但典礼也欢迎研究生、教职员工以及所有返回校园开始新学年的师生们。
Indeed, while undergraduate education is essential to Princeton's mission, Princeton is more than an undergraduate college.
确实，虽然本科教育对普林斯顿的使命至关重要，但普林斯顿不仅仅是一所本科院校。
Graduate education and research are equally important to this university's mission.
研究生教育和研究对于这所大学的使命同样重要。
This combination is by no means inevitable.
这种结合绝非不可避免。
In fact, Princeton had no graduate school and only a modest research profile for the first 150 years or so of its existence during which time it was called the College of New Jersey.
事实上，在普林斯顿存在的前150年左右的时间里，它被称为新泽西学院，期间并没有研究生院，而且研究规模也很有限。
At the modern Princeton however, we regard teaching and research as inseparable from one another.
在现代的普林斯顿，我们认为教学和研究是密不可分的。
That is partly because we know that world class researchers will be able to provide accurate state-of-the-art accounts of the subjects they teach.
那部分原因是我们知道世界级的研究人员能够提供他们所教授科目准确的前沿账户。
We also insist that our undergraduates be participants in the research enterprise.
我们还坚持认为我们的本科生应参与研究工作。
The senior thesis requirement is the most obvious example of that commitment, but we aim to infuse the research ethic through your academic experience more broadly.
毕业论文要求是这一承诺最明显的例子，但我们旨在将研究精神更广泛地融入你的学术经历中。
We want you to participate in the research activity and scholarly ethos of the university, because doing so will equip you with the skills, knowledge, and character required to distinguish fact from fiction, knowledge from opinion, and science from pseudoscience.
我们希望你能参与大学的研究活动和学术氛围，因为这样做将使你具备区分事实与虚构、知识与观点、科学与伪科学所需的技能、知识和品格。
Yeah, Dean Michael Gordon in the book that you read this summer and that we will discuss tonight shows how hard it is to draw these distinctions.
是的，迈克尔·戈登院长在你们这个夏天阅读并在今晚将要讨论的书中展示了区分这些概念是多么困难。
There is no simple test or rule that can distinguish a scientific argument from a non-scientific one.
没有简单的测试或规则可以区分科学论证和非科学论证。
Much depends on the judgments and practices of what Dean Gordon refers to in his book as the scientific community.
许多取决于戈登院长在他的书中所提到的科学界的观点和实践。
If we widen our gaze to encompass not just the sciences, but the full range of subjects taught at Princeton, we might talk about the scholarly community.
如果我们扩大视野， 不仅涵盖科学领域，还包括普林斯顿教授的所有学科，我们可能会谈到学术界。
We today welcome you not only as students, but as the newest members of our community of scholars.
今天我们不仅欢迎你们作为学生，而且欢迎你们成为我们学术界的新成员。
I accordingly want to note some of the commitments that define academic life, not only here, but across America's research universities.
因此， 我想指出一些定义学术生活的承诺，这些承诺不仅在这里存在， 在美国的研究型大学中也普遍存在。
One commitment is to respect standards of academic excellence when evaluating scholarship.
一项承诺是在评估学术成果时遵守学术卓越的标准。
Universities divide knowledge into branches or disciplines such as philosophy, physics, art and archeology, neuroscience, sociology, and computer science.
大学将知识划分为不同的分支或学科，如哲学、物理、艺术与考古学、神经科学、社会学和计算机科学。
Each discipline has its own set of methods, models, concepts, and assumptions by which to test arguments and claims.
每个学科都有其自己的方法、模型、概念和假设来检验论点和主张。
When Princeton decides whether to hire or promote professors, we evaluate their scholarship by reference to the standards of their disciplines, not by whether their work is popular with the public, government officials, or powerful interest groups.
当普林斯顿决定是否聘用或晋升教授时，我们会根据他们所在学科的标准来评估他们的学术成果，而不是看他们的工作是否受到公众、政府官员或有影响力的团体的欢迎。
We expect faculty members and students to be loyal to the truth not to the preferences of any party, official agenda, or ideological platform.
我们期望教职员工和学生忠诚于真理，而不是任何党派的偏好、官方议程或意识形态平台。
Universities must be independent sources of data, theory, and argument.
大学必须是独立的数据、理论和论据来源。
Faculty members and students should have the incentive, the responsibility, and the freedom to pursue scholarly excellence even when the arguments they generate might anger or displease powerful people.
教职员工和学生应该有动力、责任和自由去追求学术卓越，即使他们产生的论点可能会激怒或不悦有权势的人。
That independence gives universities a unique and essential role within a free and democratic republic.
那种独立性赋予大学在自由民主共和国中独特而重要的角色。
It also guarantees that they will be controversial.
这也保证了它们会具有争议性。
You'll find that the scholarly disciplines represented on this campus pursue truth from varying angles and perspectives.
你会发现在这个校园里所代表的学术领域从不同的角度和视角追求真理。
If, for example, you ask an apparently simple question such as, what is color and why does it matter, to an art historian, a physicist, and a philosopher, you will likely get very different answers from each.
例如， 如果你向一位艺术史学家、一位物理学家和一位哲学家提出一个看似简单的问题，比如“什么是颜色以及它为什么重要”，你可能会从每个人那里得到截然不同的答案。
And by the way, when I propose asking professors a question, I mean the suggestion literally.
而且顺便说一下，当我提议向教授提问时，我是字面上的意思。
One of the great privileges of being a student here is the access you have to faculty members who are not only world leaders in their academic discipline, but also dedicated teachers.
在这里学习的一个巨大特权就是你能接触到这里的教师们，他们不仅是各自学术领域的世界领军人物，而且还是致力于教学的优秀教师。
Go to their office hours, invite them to lunch, or to your athletic competitions, or artistic performances.
去他们的办公室， 邀请他们共进午餐，或者观看你的体育比赛， 或者艺术表演。
Find out what they know and who they are beyond the classroom.
了解他们在课堂之外知道什么和他们是谁。
I strongly recommend going to office hours early in the semester.
我强烈建议在学期初就去办公室时间。
You don't have to ask about the course.
你不必询问这门课程。
You can ask them about color or for that matter you can ask them whether they agree with what I've said in this speech.
你可以问他们关于颜色的问题，或者你可以问他们是否同意我在演讲中所说的。
They have no obligation to agree with it.
他们没有义务同意这一点。
I find they often disagree with what I say.
我发现他们经常与我说的内容存在分歧。
They have no obligation to agree with it and neither do you.
他们没有义务同意这一点，你也没有。
That brings me to another of the commitments that define scholarly communities.
这让我想到了定义学术界社区的另一项承诺。
We treat respectful disagreement as desirable and beneficial.
我们将尊重的异议视为可取和有益的。
When people ask hard but fair questions about our ideas, we should regard their inquiry as a compliment.
当人们就我们的想法提出艰难但公平的问题时，我们应该将其视为一种赞美。
It means they're taking our thoughts seriously enough to care whether they are correct.
这意味着他们足够重视我们的想法，以至于关心它们是否正确。
Princeton physics professor Jim Peebles exemplified this spirit in comments that he made after receiving the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics, which honored him for his theories about the origin, structure, and evolution of the physical universe.
普林斯顿大学物理教授詹姆斯·皮布尔斯在获得2019年诺贝尔物理学奖后发表的评论中体现了这种精神，该奖项表彰了他关于物理宇宙的起源、结构和演化的理论。
Professor Peebles said at his press conference and in interviews that he hoped that the cosmological theory to which he contributed would eventually be proven wrong.
皮布尔斯教授在新闻发布会上和采访中表示，他希望他所贡献的宇宙学理论最终会被证明是错误的。
That he said is how science works.
他说这就是科学的工作方式。
New generations of scientists replace older theories with better ones.
新一代的科学家用更好的理论取代旧的理论。
To live up to the ideals of a scholarly community we all need to recognize that some of our opinions will turn out to be wrong.
为了达到学术界的理想，我们都需要认识到，我们的某些观点最终会被证明是错误的。
We should want to find our errors.
我们应该想要找出我们的错误。
To do so we need to seek out criticism and test our views against the most cogent objections.
为此，我们需要寻求批评，并用最有力的反对意见来检验我们的观点。
Let me mention one other principle that is fundamental to this and other scholarly communities.
让我提一下另一个基本原则，这对这个和其他学术界都至关重要。
That's a commitment to honesty.
那是一种对诚实的承诺。
At Princeton, the undergraduate honor code is, one, especially visible manifestation of this important commitment.
在普林斯顿，本科生的荣誉准则是一项特别明显的承诺体现。
I trust that I don't need to explain why honesty is better than dishonesty, or why it's wrong to steal other people's ideas, or claim credit for words that are not our own even words generated by a machine.
我相信无需解释为什么诚实比不诚实更好，为什么窃取他人的想法或为非自己所说的话（即使是机器生成的）争取功劳是错误的。
You've known that since childhood.
你从小就知道这一点。
I will add however, that honesty bears a special connection to scholarship and education.
然而，我将补充一点，诚实与学术和教育有着特殊的联系。
A dedication to truth requires among other things truthfulness about the sources for our ideas and claims.
对真理的奉献要求我们诚实地说明思想和主张的来源。
We must own up to our ideas, including our mistakes, if we wish to learn from our errors and benefit from criticism of our thinking.
我们必须对自己的想法负责，包括我们的错误，如果我们希望从错误中学习并从对他人的思考的批评中受益。
There's value and honor in being wrong.
犯错也有其价值和荣誉。
Being wrong is an indispensable part of improvement, learning, and discovery.
犯错是改进、学习和发现不可或缺的一部分。
There is however, neither value nor honor in cheating not in scholarship and not in any other domain of human activity.
然而，在学术领域或其他任何人类活动中，作弊既没有价值也没有荣誉。
Scholarly standards, respectful disagreement, personal integrity, these qualities among others help to define the community that you now join.
学术标准、尊重的异议、个人诚信，这些品质以及其他一些品质， 帮助定义了你现在即将加入的社区。
I am so glad that you will be part of that community.
我很高兴你能成为这个社区的一员。
I look forward to getting to know you in the years ahead as you explore this university and find your own place within it.
我期待在未来几年里了解你们，当你们探索这所大学并找到自己的位置时。
To Princeton's great class of 2029, to our incoming transfer students, to our new graduate students, and to everyone who joins or returns to our community as we begin a new academic year, I say, welcome to Princeton.
致普林斯顿2029届的伟大同学们， 致新转入的学生们，致新来的研究生们， 以及在我们开启新学年之际加入或回归我们社区的每一个人，我在此对大家说：欢迎来到普林斯顿！
来源：英语东