Chris Anderson: So, this is an interview with a difference. On the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words, what I did was, I asked Bill and Melinda to dig out from their archive some images that would help explain some of what they've done, and do a few things that way.
克里斯·安德森:這是一個有點不同的採訪, 基於一張圖片勝過千言萬語, 我請比爾和美琳達 從他們的文件櫃裡找出 一些能夠有助於解釋他們 所完成的事情的圖片, 以此來做些採訪。
So, we're going to start here. Melinda, when and where was this, and who is that handsome man next to you?
我們從這裡開始。 美琳達,這是什麽時候,在哪裡, 以及你身邊這個帥哥是誰?
Melinda Gates: With those big glasses, huh? This is in Africa, our very first trip, the first time either of us had ever been to Africa, in the fall of 1993. We were already engaged to be married. We married a few months later, and this was the trip where we really went to see the animals and to see the savanna. It was incredible. Bill had never taken that much time off from work. But what really touched us, actually, were the people, and the extreme poverty. We started asking ourselves questions. Does it have to be like this? And at the end of the trip, we went out to Zanzibar, and took some time to walk on the beach, which is something we had done a lot while we were dating. And we'd already been talking about during that time that the wealth that had come from Microsoft would be given back to society, but it was really on that beach walk that we started to talk about, well, what might we do and how might we go about it?
美琳達·蓋茲:你是說帶著大眼鏡的那個? 這是在非洲,我們的第一次, 之前我們都沒去過非洲, 那是1993年的秋天。 那個時候我們已經訂婚了。 幾個月後就結婚了, 這趟旅行我們特別想看 動物以及大草原。 非常神奇。 比爾從未放假那麼長時間。 但真正感動我們的,是那裡的人, 以及那邊極度的貧困。 我們開始問自己, 這裡真的只能這樣嗎? 在我們旅行結束的時候,我們去了桑給巴爾島, 並且花了點時間在沙灘上散步, 我們在交往的時候經常如此。 那時我們已在討論 從微軟獲得的財富 將用於回報社會, 但從那次海邊散步, 我們真正開始討論 我們可以做什麽 以及我們可以怎麼做?
CA: So, given that this vacation led to the creation of the world's biggest private foundation, it's pretty expensive as vacations go. (Laughter)
克:所以,既然那次度假 誕生了世界最大的私人基金會, 這假期是十分昂貴了。 (笑)
MG: I guess so. We enjoyed it.
美:是這樣。我們很開心。
CA: Which of you was the key instigator here, or was it symmetrical? Bill Gates: Well, I think we were excited that there'd be a phase of our life where we'd get to work together and figure out how to give this money back. At this stage, we were talking about the poorest, and could you have a big impact on them? Were there things that weren't being done? There was a lot we didn't know. Our naïveté is pretty incredible, when we look back on it. But we had a certain enthusiasm that that would be the phase, the post-Microsoft phase would be our philanthropy.
克:你們誰是主要的策動者, 還是你們是同等的? 比爾·蓋茲:我覺得我們當時都很興奮, 想到我們人生將有一個階段 我們能一起工作 以及研究如何將這筆錢回饋社會。 在那個階段,我們在討論最窮的階層。 能否對他們有重大的影響? 是否還有他們需要但沒人在做的事情? 有很多事情我們都還不瞭解。 現在回首,那時我們是驚人的天真。 但是我們有熱情,在那個階段, 微軟後的那個階段 會是我們的慈善事業。
MG: Which Bill always thought was going to come after he was 60, so he hasn't quite hit 60 yet, so some things change along the way.
美:比爾一直認為那個階段 會是在他60歲以後。 那他還沒到60, 所以有些事在途中會改變。 克:所以開始於那裡,但加速進行了。
CA: So it started there, but it got accelerated. So that was '93, and it was '97, really, before the foundation itself started.
當時是1993,而真正基金會建立是1997。 美:是。1997年我們讀了一篇文章,
MA: Yeah, in '97, we read an article about diarrheal diseases killing so many kids around the world, and we kept saying to ourselves, "Well that can't be. In the U.S., you just go down to the drug store." And so we started gathering scientists and started learning about population, learning about vaccines, learning about what had worked and what had failed, and that's really when we got going, was in late 1998, 1999.
是關於腹瀉導致各地太多孩子死去。 我們一直對自己說: “這不對。 在美國,你只需要去藥店。” 所以我們開始找科學家, 開始研究學習人口、疫苗、 哪些有效、哪些失敗了。 我們是從那個時候真正開始的。 大概在1998年末,1999年。 克:所以你們有一大把錢,
CA: So, you've got a big pot of money and a world full of so many different issues. How on Earth do you decide what to focus on?
以及一個充滿各種不同問題的世界。 你們怎麼決定關注哪一個問題? 比爾·蓋茲:我們決定挑選兩個事業,
BG: Well, we decided that we'd pick two causes, whatever the biggest inequity was globally, and there we looked at children dying, children not having enough nutrition to ever develop, and countries that were really stuck, because with that level of death, and parents would have so many kids that they'd get huge population growth, and that the kids were so sick that they really couldn't be educated and lift themselves up. So that was our global thing, and then in the U.S., both of us have had amazing educations, and we saw that as the way that the U.S. could live up to its promise of equal opportunity is by having a phenomenal education system, and the more we learned, the more we realized we're not really fulfilling that promise. And so we picked those two things, and everything the foundation does is focused there.
現在全球最不平等的是什麼, 那我們關注的是 那些將死的孩子們, 沒有足夠營養去成長的孩子們, 以及那些真正停滯的國家, 因為那樣高的死亡率, 父母會有很多孩子 以至於他們的人口快速增長, 孩子們又相當病弱, 使他們無法接受教育 來支持他們自己。 那是我們在全球關注的事業。 然後在美國, 我們都接受了極好的教育, 我們視為是美國 實現它平等機會的諾言的方式, 就是具有一個獨特非凡的教育體系。 但隨著我們瞭解的更多,我們更意識到 我們沒有真的實現那個諾言。 所以我們選擇了這兩件事, 而這個基金會做的所有事情 都是關注於這兩件事。
CA: So, I asked each of you to pick an image that you like that illustrates your work, and Melinda, this is what you picked. What's this about?
克:我請你們各選了一張 你喜歡並且能夠說明 你做的工作的圖片。 美琳達,這是你選的。 這是關於什麼?
MG: So I, one of the things I love to do when I travel is to go out to the rural areas and talk to the women, whether it's Bangladesh, India, lots of countries in Africa, and I go in as a Western woman without a name. I don't tell them who I am. Pair of khakis. And I kept hearing from women, over and over and over, the more I traveled, "I want to be able to use this shot." I would be there to talk to them about childhood vaccines, and they would bring the conversation around to "But what about the shot I get?" which is an injection they were getting called Depo-Provera, which is a contraceptive. And I would come back and talk to global health experts, and they'd say, "Oh no, contraceptives are stocked in in the developing world." Well, you had to dig deeper into the reports, and this is what the team came to me with, which is, to have the number one thing that women tell you in Africa they want to use stocked out more than 200 days a year explains why women were saying to me, "I walked 10 kilometers without my husband knowing it, and I got to the clinic, and there was nothing there." And so condoms were stocked in in Africa because of all the AIDS work that the U.S. and others supported. But women will tell you over and over again, "I can't negotiate a condom with my husband. I'm either suggesting he has AIDS or I have AIDS, and I need that tool because then I can space the births of my children, and I can feed them and have a chance of educating them."
美:旅遊中我最愛的事之一就是 去農村和當地的婦女聊天, 無論是孟加拉、印度,還是非洲的很多國家, 我只作為一名無名的西方婦女去。 我不跟她們說我是誰,只穿條卡其褲。 我一直聽到的是, 隨著我旅行更多,我反覆聽到: “我想要這種注射針。” 我是在和她們談兒童疫苗, 而她們會說: “那我要有的那針呢?” 那是她們得到的一種注射,叫狄波-普维拉, 是一種避孕手段。 然後我回去會咨詢全球衛生專家, 然後他們會說:“不會,避孕用 發展中的國家都有庫存”。 你需要在報告中挖深點, 這是我們團隊給我的。 在非洲,婦女說的 她們最需要的東西 一年中超過200天缺貨。 這能解釋她們會說 “我瞞著丈夫走了10公里到診所 但那裡什麼都沒有“。 所以,避孕套在非洲是有庫存的, 是因為那些對愛滋病開展的工作 由美國和其它國家支持的。 但婦女也會反複告訴你: “我無法要求我的丈夫用避孕套, 那是暗示他或者我有愛滋病。 但我需要它,因為那樣我能隔開 生孩子的時間,我才能養他們 並有機會教育他們。”
CA: Melinda, you're Roman Catholic, and you've often been embroiled in controversy over this issue, and on the abortion question, on both sides, really. How do you navigate that?
克:美琳達,你是天主教徒。 你常被捲入 關於這個問題的爭論, 以及關於墮胎的爭論, 而且是與正反兩方。 你如何應對?
MG: Yeah, so I think that's a really important point, which is, we had backed away from contraceptives as a global community. We knew that 210 million women were saying they wanted access to contraceptives, even the contraceptives we have here in the United States, and we weren't providing them because of the political controversy in our country, and to me that was just a crime, and I kept looking around trying to find the person that would get this back on the global stage, and I finally realized I just had to do it. And even though I'm Catholic, I believe in contraceptives just like most of the Catholic women in the United States who report using contraceptives, and I shouldn't let that controversy be the thing that holds us back. We used to have consensus in the United States around contraceptives, and so we got back to that global consensus, and actually raised 2.6 billion dollars around exactly this issue for women. (Applause)
美:是,這是非常重要的一點。 作為全球的一員,我們對於避孕問題退縮了。 我們知道有2.1億女性 想得以使用避孕措施。 甚至只是我們美國有的避孕藥。 但是我們因為國內的政治爭論而不提供, 對我而言那是犯罪。 我一直在尋找人 將這個問題帶回全世界的關注, 最後我明白了自己必須去做。 即便我是一個天主教徒, 我相信避孕措施。 就像美國大部份女性天主教徒 承認使用避孕措施, 我不能讓這個爭議阻遏我們。 我們在美國曾對避孕有共識。 所以我們達成了全球的共識, 事實上我們爲了這個女性的問題 募捐到26億美元。 (掌聲)
CA: Bill, this is your graph. What's this about?
克:比爾,這是你的圖表,這是關於什麽?
BG: Well, my graph has numbers on it. (Laughter) I really like this graph. This is the number of children who die before the age of five every year. And what you find is really a phenomenal success story which is not widely known, that we are making incredible progress. We go from 20 million not long after I was born to now we're down to about six million. So this is a story largely of vaccines. Smallpox was killing a couple million kids a year. That was eradicated, so that got down to zero. Measles was killing a couple million a year. That's down to a few hundred thousand. Anyway, this is a chart where you want to get that number to continue, and it's going to be possible, using the science of new vaccines, getting the vaccines out to kids. We can actually accelerate the progress. The last decade, that number has dropped faster than ever in history, and so I just love the fact that you can say, okay, if we can invent new vaccines, we can get them out there, use the very latest understanding of these things, and get the delivery right, that we can perform a miracle.
比:我的圖表上有數字。 (笑聲) 我非常喜歡這個圖表。 這是每年五歲前夭折的兒童總數。 你會發現這真的 是一個巨大成功的故事,但並不廣為人知, 我們取得了多麼大的進展。 我們從2千萬,在我出生的年代, 到現在減少到6百萬。 這是一個主要關於疫苗的故事。 過去每年幾百萬孩子死於天花, 但那被根除了,所以降到了0。 還有幾百萬是死於麻疹, 如今已經減少到幾十萬。 無論如何,在這張表上 你希望那些數字繼續減少, 並且這將是可能的。 使用新的疫苗科學, 並為孩子們提供這些疫苗, 我們實際上可以加速這樣的進程。 上個世紀, 這個數量下降的很快, 超過歷史上的任何一個時候。 我喜歡的是, 如果我們可以發明新的疫苗, 我們可以將疫苗發放出去, 利用最新的發現, 並使用正確的傳輸技術, 我們就能創造奇蹟。
CA: I mean, you do the math on this, and it works out, I think, literally to thousands of kids' lives saved every day compared to the prior year. It's not reported. An airliner with 200-plus deaths is a far, far bigger story than that. Does that drive you crazy?
克:如果你計算一下,那就是相比於上一年, 平均每天有幾千個 兒童的生命得以遠離死亡。 這並沒有被報導。 一架導致兩百多人死亡的飛機 是一個比這個重大得多的新聞。 那會讓你抓狂嗎? 比:是的,因為這是個默默發生的事情。
BG: Yeah, because it's a silent thing going on. It's a kid, one kid at a time. Ninety-eight percent of this has nothing to do with natural disasters, and yet, people's charity, when they see a natural disaster, are wonderful. It's incredible how people think, okay, that could be me, and the money flows. These causes have been a bit invisible. Now that the Millennium Development Goals and various things are getting out there, we are seeing some increased generosity, so the goal is to get this well below a million, which should be possible in our lifetime.
這是一個孩子,一次一個孩子。 這裡98%與自然災害無關, 但是, 當人們看到自然災害的時候, 人們的善心是極好的。 很神奇地,人們想到 “喔那可能發生在我身上”,於是錢就出去了。 這些社會事業之前的可見度較低。 如今聯合國千禧年發展目標 並且各種事情都開始為人所知道, 我們有看到更多慷慨的捐助。 所以,目標就是將這個數量減少到百萬以下, 在我們的一生中應該是可以實現的。
CA: Maybe it needed someone who is turned on by numbers and graphs rather than just the big, sad face to get engaged. I mean, you've used it in your letter this year, you used basically this argument to say that aid, contrary to the current meme that aid is kind of worthless and broken, that actually it has been effective.
克:可能它需要那種會注意數字和圖表 多於一張大大的,悲傷的臉的人來參與。 這幾年你都在信中用了這個觀點去論證。 於援助破碎、無價值的當下流行觀點相反, 援助事實上有效果。 比爾:是的,人們可以說……
BG: Yeah, well people can take, there is some aid that was well-meaning and didn't go well. There's some venture capital investments that were well-meaning and didn't go well. You shouldn't just say, okay, because of that, because we don't have a perfect record, this is a bad endeavor. You should look at, what was your goal? How are you trying to uplift nutrition and survival and literacy so these countries can take care of themselves, and say wow, this is going well, and be smarter. We can spend aid smarter. It is not all a panacea. We can do better than venture capital, I think, including big hits like this.
有一些救援是善意的 但是進行並不順利。 也有一些風險投資 是善意的但進行並不順利。 你不能就說, 因為我們沒有完美無缺, 這就是個不好的努力。 你應該關注,你的目標是什麽? 你如何嘗試去提高營養、 生存,以及教育, 使得這些國家可以自己解決這些問題, 然後說,哇,這個進行得真順利, 並且更明智。 我們可以更明智的去實施援助。 這並不全是靈丹妙藥。 我認為我們可以做的 比風險投資更好, 包括像這樣的特大成功。 克:傳統上人們普遍認為, 夫婦一起工作是很困難的。
CA: Traditional wisdom is that it's pretty hard for married couples to work together. How have you guys managed it? MG: Yeah, I've had a lot of women say to me, "I really don't think I could work with my husband. That just wouldn't work out." You know, we enjoy it, and we don't -- this foundation has been a coming to for both of us in its continuous learning journey, and we don't travel together as much for the foundation, actually, as we used to when Bill was working at Microsoft. We have more trips where we're traveling separately, but I always know when I come home, Bill's going to be interested in what I learned, whether it's about women or girls or something new about the vaccine delivery chain, or this person that is a great leader. He's going to listen and be really interested. And he knows when he comes home, even if it's to talk about the speech he did or the data or what he's learned, I'm really interested, and I think we have a really collaborative relationship. But we don't every minute together, that's for sure. (Laughter)
你們是如何做到的? 美:是的,很多女性對我說過, “我真的不覺得我可以和我丈夫一起工作。 就是做不到。” 我們很享受, 這個基金會對我們而言 是一個持續學習的旅程。 其實我們爲基金會沒有很多一起的旅行, 不及比爾還在微軟工作時那麽經常。 我們有更多分開的旅行, 但是我知道當我回家後, 比爾會對我所學到的東西非常感興趣, 無論是關於婦女還是女孩, 又或者是關於疫苗輸送環節的事情, 或者是某個人是一個很好的領導者。 他會傾聽並且非常感興趣。 而他知道當他回家後, 即便要討論他說過的演講、 或是數據,或是他所學到的東西, 我也非常感興趣, 並且我認為我們真正有一種合作的關係。 但我們並沒有每分鐘都在一起,這是肯定的。 (笑聲) 克:你們現在在一起, 我們非常高興你們都在。
CA: But now you are, and we're very happy that you are. Melinda, early on, you were basically largely running the show. Six years ago, I guess, Bill came on full time, so moved from Microsoft and became full time. That must have been hard, adjusting to that. No?
美琳達,早些時候,基本上 都是你在做決策。 大約6年前, 比爾離開了微軟變成了全職。 那時對此適應一定非常困難,不是嗎? 美:是的,我認為事實上,
MG: Yeah. I think actually, for the foundation employees, there was way more angst for them than there was for me about Bill coming. I was actually really excited. I mean, Bill made this decision even obviously before it got announced in 2006, and it was really his decision, but again, it was a beach vacation where we were walking on the beach and he was starting to think of this idea. And for me, the excitement of Bill putting his brain and his heart against these huge global problems, these inequities, to me that was exciting. Yes, the foundation employees had angst about that. (Applause)
對於基金會的員工, 對於比爾的到來, 他們比我更加焦慮。 事實上,我當時真的非常興奮。 比爾做了這個決定 ——當然是2006年宣佈之前就決定了, 這真的是他自己的決定。 但是,又是有個有沙灘的假期, 我們沿著海灘散步, 並且開始考慮這個主意。 對我而言,比爾 全身心的投入抵抗這些 巨大的全球難題、這些不平等, 對我而言那是令人激動的。 是的,基金會的員工對此焦慮過…… (掌聲)
CA: That's cool.
克:那很棒!
MG: But that went away within three months, once he was there.
美:但那焦慮三個月之內就沒有了, 從比爾到來後。
BG: Including some of the employees.
比爾:包括一些員工。
MG: That's what I said, the employees, it went away for them three months after you were there.
美:我是說員工,這種感覺在 你到來之後三個月就沒有了。 美:哦,你是說...... 員工可沒走。
BG: No, I'm kidding. MG: Oh, you mean, the employees didn't go away.
比爾:沒,開玩笑的。 有幾個是離開了,但是......
BG: A few of them did, but — (Laughter)
(笑聲) 克:你們兩人會爭論什麽?
CA: So what do you guys argue about? Sunday, 11 o'clock, you're away from work, what comes up? What's the argument?
比方說,週日11點, 你們沒在工作, 會談到什麽?爭論是什麽? 比爾·蓋茨:因為我們從最開始一起建立了這個。
BG: Because we built this thing together from the beginning, it's this great partnership. I had that with Paul Allen in the early days of Microsoft. I had it with Steve Ballmer as Microsoft got bigger, and now Melinda, and in even stronger, equal ways, is the partner, so we talk a lot about which things should we give more to, which groups are working well? She's got a lot of insight. She'll sit down with the employees a lot. We'll take the different trips she described. So there's a lot of collaboration. I can't think of anything where one of us had a super strong opinion about one thing or another?
這是個偉大的合作關係。 在微軟早期的時候, 我與保羅·艾倫有這樣的關係; 在微軟壯大的時期,我和史蒂夫·巴爾默 也有這樣的關係; 如今和美琳達,甚至 更強和平等的方式,是合作夥伴。 我們討論了很多, 關於我們應該更加關注什麽, 哪一個小組運行良好? 她有很多見解。 她會和員工一起討論很多。 像她所描述的一樣,我們有著不同的旅行。 所以會有很多不同的合作。 我不記得我們其中任何一個人 對於任何一件事, 會有著一種非常強的執念。 克:那你呢,美琳達,你記得嗎? (笑聲)
CA: How about you, Melinda, though? Can you? (Laughter) You never know.
你永遠不知道。 美:事情是這樣的。
MG: Well, here's the thing. We come at things from different angles, and I actually think that's really good. So Bill can look at the big data and say, "I want to act based on these global statistics." For me, I come at it from intuition. I meet with lots of people on the ground and Bill's taught me to take that and read up to the global data and see if they match, and I think what I've taught him is to take that data and meet with people on the ground to understand, can you actually deliver that vaccine? Can you get a woman to accept those polio drops in her child's mouth? Because the delivery piece is every bit as important as the science. So I think it's been more a coming to over time towards each other's point of view, and quite frankly, the work is better because of it.
我們對同一件事情有著不同的角度, 並且事實上我認為那是好的。 比爾關注著大量的數據, 然後說:“我的做法是基於全球的數據。” 而我則是從直覺的角度。 我實地探訪很多人, 而比爾教會我將那些 和閱讀到的全球數據放一起,看它們是否匹配, 而我認為我教他的, 是去使用那些數據 並且去見一些相關的人, 來瞭解你能確實運送那些疫苗嗎? 你能讓一位婦女接受脊髓灰質炎藥丸 (脊髓灰质炎俗稱為小兒痲痹症) 並餵給她的孩子嗎? 因為運輸的這一塊 和科學同等重要。 所以我認為久而久之 我們相互慢慢接近另一方的觀點, 坦率的說,我們的工作也因此更好。 克:所以,在疫苗以及脊髓灰質炎等,
CA: So, in vaccines and polio and so forth, you've had some amazing successes. What about failure, though? Can you talk about a failure and maybe what you've learned from it?
你們有著驚人的成功。 那麼關於失敗呢? 你們能否談談一次失敗 以及你們從中獲得了什麽? 比爾:幸運的是,我們能夠承受幾次失敗,
BG: Yeah. Fortunately, we can afford a few failures, because we've certainly had them. We do a lot of drug work or vaccine work that you know you're going to have different failures. Like, we put out, one that got a lot of publicity was asking for a better condom. Well, we got hundreds of ideas. Maybe a few of those will work out. We were very naïve, certainly I was, about a drug for a disease in India, visceral leishmaniasis, that I thought, once I got this drug, we can just go wipe out the disease. Well, turns out it took an injection every day for 10 days. It took three more years to get it than we expected, and then there was no way it was going to get out there. Fortunately, we found out that if you go kill the sand flies, you probably can have success there, but we spent five years, you could say wasted five years, and about 60 million, on a path that turned out to have very modest benefit when we got there.
因為我們確實有過失敗。 我們做了很多關於藥品以及疫苗的工作, 你知道你將會遇到不同的失敗。 比如,我們提出過,一個被廣泛宣傳的, 要求更好避孕套的設計競賽。 我們收到了幾百個構思。 可能其中的幾個能夠成功。 我們當時非常天真,我確實是,對於 印度一種疾病的藥品, 內臟利什曼病 (俗稱黑熱病)。 當時我想,一旦我得到這種藥, 我們就能抹去這個疾病了。 然而,事實上它需要10天,每天注射一次; 藥品比我們預期的多花了三年之久; 然後又沒法將它運去印度使用。 幸運的是,我們發現,如果你去消滅白蛉 那你估計能成功。 但是我們花了5年, 或者說浪費了5年, 以及大約6千萬, 在一條最終只獲益非常小的方法上。 克:你每年都要在教育上 花大約幾十億美金。
CA: You're spending, like, a billion dollars a year in education, I think, something like that. Is anything, the story of what's gone right there is quite a long and complex one. Are there any failures that you can talk about?
這個方面取得的成功是個 很長且複雜的故事。 你能說說有什麽失敗的嗎? 美:我覺得我們早期的工作 教會了我們重要的一課,
MG: Well, I would say a huge lesson for us out of the early work is we thought that these small schools were the answer, and small schools definitely help. They bring down the dropout rate. They have less violence and crime in those schools. But the thing that we learned from that work, and what turned out to be the fundamental key, is a great teacher in front of the classroom. If you don't have an effective teacher in the front of the classroom, I don't care how big or small the building is, you're not going to change the trajectory of whether that student will be ready for college. (Applause)
是我們認為小學校能解決問題。 小型學校確實很有幫助, 他們降低輟學率、 這些學校當中更少暴力和犯罪, 但是我們從這之中學到的, 而且發現最根本的關鍵 是在教室前的偉大的老師。 如果你沒有一個好的老師站在教室裡, 我不在乎這棟樓多大或者多小, 你不會改變這些學生的人生軌跡, 或者他們是否會對高等教育做好準備。 (掌聲) 克·安德森:所以美琳達,這就是你
CA: So Melinda, this is you and your eldest daughter, Jenn. And just taken about three weeks ago, I think, three or four weeks ago. Where was this?
以及你的大女兒,珍妮。 是3或4週前的照片,這是在哪? 美:我們當時去了坦桑尼亞。珍妮曾去過。
MG: So we went to Tanzania. Jenn's been to Tanzania. All our kids have been to Africa quite a bit, actually. And we did something very different, which is, we decided to go spend two nights and three days with a family. Anna and Sanare are the parents. They invited us to come and stay in their boma. Actually, the goats had been there, I think, living in that particular little hut on their little compound before we got there. And we stayed with their family, and we really, really learned what life is like in rural Tanzania. And the difference between just going and visiting for half a day or three quarters of a day versus staying overnight was profound, and so let me just give you one explanation of that. They had six children, and as I talked to Anna in the kitchen, we cooked for about five hours in the cooking hut that day, and as I talked to her, she had absolutely planned and spaced with her husband the births of their children. It was a very loving relationship. This was a Maasai warrior and his wife, but they had decided to get married, they clearly had respect and love in the relationship. Their children, their six children, the two in the middle were twins, 13, a boy, and a girl named Grace. And when we'd go out to chop wood and do all the things that Grace and her mother would do, Grace was not a child, she was an adolescent, but she wasn't an adult. She was very, very shy. So she kept wanting to talk to me and Jenn. We kept trying to engage her, but she was shy. And at night, though, when all the lights went out in rural Tanzania, and there was no moon that night, the first night, and no stars, and Jenn came out of our hut with her REI little headlamp on, Grace went immediately, and got the translator, came straight up to my Jenn and said, "When you go home, can I have your headlamp so I can study at night?"
事實上我們的孩子都去過很多次非洲, 我們做了不同的事情, 我們決定 用三天兩夜的時間和當地家庭一起生活。 安娜和薩那,是父母。 他們邀請我們參觀他們的茅草棚。 (BOMA源自於斯瓦西裡語,是馬賽族所居住的草棚) 事實上,似乎這隻山羊也是, 在我們到來之前,住在那個小草棚裡。 我們和他們那個家庭一起生活, 我們真的學到了 坦桑尼亞的農村生活是什麽樣的。 相比於只是去那裡半天, 或者大半天, 在那裡住一晚是更加意義深刻的。 我來為此給一個解釋。 他們有6個孩子,當我和安娜在廚房聊天的時候 ——我們那天在做飯的棚裡大概5個小時, 當我和她聊到,她曾和她的丈夫計劃 安排他們生孩子的數目。 這是一個充滿愛的關係。 這是個馬賽族的戰士和他的妻子, 但是他們決定結婚, 他們的關係是有尊重與愛情的。 他們的六個孩子, 中間兩個是雙胞胎,13歲, 一個男孩,以及一個女孩叫做格蕾絲。 當我們出門砍柴以及 做格蕾絲和她母親做的活 ——格蕾絲不是個小孩子,她是個青少年, 但還不是個成年人。 她非常非常的害羞。 所以她一直想於 我和珍妮說話, 我們嘗試交流,但是她很害羞。 但晚上,當坦桑尼亞農村的燈全都滅了以後, 那一夜的晚上沒有月亮, 第一晚,沒有星星。 珍妮從我們的草棚走出去, 帶著她的REI的小頭燈, (REI:全球最大的戶外用品連鎖零售組織) 格蕾絲也立刻出去 找到翻譯, 直接走向珍妮,說: “當你回家的時候, 你能把頭燈送給我嗎? 這樣我就可以在晚上學習了。” 克:哦,哇。
CA: Oh, wow.
美:她的父親告訴過我
MG: And her dad had told me how afraid he was that unlike the son, who had passed his secondary exams, because of her chores, she'd not done so well and wasn't in the government school yet. He said, "I don't know how I'm going to pay for her education. I can't pay for private school, and she may end up on this farm like my wife." So they know the difference that an education can make in a huge, profound way.
他是多麼的擔心,因為不像他的兒子 已經通過了中學考試, 因為她的家務事, 她考得並不好, 所以還沒上公立學校。 他說:“我不知道我如何才能支付她的教育費用。 我付不起私立學校的錢, 她可能會像我妻子一樣 在這個農場裡生活。” 所以,他們知道教育可以讓他們的人生產生 巨大、深刻的不同。
CA: I mean, this is another pic of your other two kids, Rory and Phoebe, along with Paul Farmer. Bringing up three children when you're the world's richest family seems like a social experiment without much prior art. How have you managed it? What's been your approach?
克:這是另一張照片, 是你以及你另外兩個孩子,洛瑞和菲比, 和保羅·法姆。 要養大三個孩子, 當你們是世界上 最富有家庭的時候, 就好像一個沒有很多前例社會實驗。 你們是如何處理的? 你們的方法是什麽? 比:總的來說
BG: Well, I'd say overall the kids get a great education, but you've got to make sure they have a sense of their own ability and what they're going to go and do, and our philosophy has been to be very clear with them -- most of the money's going to the foundation -- and help them find something they're excited about. We want to strike a balance where they have the freedom to do anything but not a lot of money showered on them so they could go out and do nothing. And so far, they're fairly diligent, excited to pick their own direction.
這些孩子獲得了良好的教育。 但是你需要確定 他們有感到他們自己的能力 知道要去哪以及要做什麽。 我們在這方面的理念 就是讓他們清楚 我們大部份的錢都會捐給基金會, 以及幫助他們找到真正熱衷的事情。 我們希望達到一個平衡, 讓他們能夠自由去做任何事, 但不是將一大筆錢撒給他們 使他們能出去什麽都不做。 到目前為止,他們相當勤奮, 對於選擇自己的方向很興奮。 克:你們確實保護了他們的隱私, 原因自然很明顯。
CA: You've obviously guarded their privacy carefully for obvious reasons. I'm curious why you've given me permission to show this picture now here at TED. MG: Well, it's interesting. As they get older, they so know that our family belief is about responsibility, that we are in an unbelievable situation just to live in the United States and have a great education, and we have a responsibility to give back to the world. And so as they get older and we are teaching them -- they have been to so many countries around the world — they're saying, we do want people to know that we believe in what you're doing, Mom and Dad, and it is okay to show us more. So we have their permission to show this picture, and I think Paul Farmer is probably going to put it eventually in some of his work. But they really care deeply about the mission of the foundation, too.
我很好奇爲什麽你們允許我 在 TED 上曬出這張照片。 美:這很有趣。 當他們長大後,他們很明白 我們家的信仰是責任, 我們身處於一個不敢想像的環境, 生活在美國, 有良好的教育, 我們有責任回報於世界。 當他們長大以後 我們也在教他們 —— 他們去過世界上那麼多的國家 —— 他們會說, 我們希望所有人能知道我們相信 你們所做的,老爸老媽 讓我們露臉多些真的沒關係。 所以我們獲得了他們曬這張照片的許可, 而且我想保羅·法姆可能會 最終把這張照片放到他的工作裡去。 但是我他們真的十分關心 基金會的使命。 克:你們有足夠的資金, 即使對基金會大量捐款
CA: You've easily got enough money despite your vast contributions to the foundation to make them all billionaires. Is that your plan for them?
仍能使他們成為億萬富翁, 那是你們的計劃嗎? 比爾:不會。他們不會有任何那樣的東西。
BG: Nope. No. They won't have anything like that. They need to have a sense that their own work is meaningful and important. We read an article long, actually, before we got married, where Warren Buffett talked about that, and we're quite convinced that it wasn't a favor either to society or to the kids.
他們需要一種感覺, 就是他們自己的工作 是有價值的並且重要的。 我們事實上讀了一篇很長的文章—— 在我們結婚之前, 華倫·巴菲特對此談過, 我們十分相信這不是一種恩惠, 無論是對社會還是對孩子而言。 克·安德森:說到華倫·巴菲特,
CA: Well, speaking of Warren Buffett, something really amazing happened in 2006, when somehow your only real rival for richest person in America suddenly turned around and agreed to give 80 percent of his fortune to your foundation. How on Earth did that happen? I guess there's a long version and a short version of that. We've got time for the short version.
2006年發生了一些令人震驚的事情, 你作為美國最富有的人, 唯一真正的對手 (指巴菲特), 不知為何突然同意 將他80%的財富捐給 你的基金會。 那事怎麼發生的? 我想會有個長版本,和一個短版本。 我們只有時間聽短點的版本了。
BG: All right. Well, Warren was a close friend, and he was going to have his wife Suzie give it all away. Tragically, she passed away before he did, and he's big on delegation, and — (Laughter) — he said —
比:好吧,華倫是一個很好的朋友, 並且他曾打算讓他的妻子蘇西 全部捐掉。 難過的是,她在他之前離世了, 而他很善於下放工作。 (笑聲) 他說——
CA: Tweet that.
克:我要把這發到推特上去。
BG: If he's got somebody who is doing something well, and is willing to do it at no charge, maybe that's okay. But we were stunned. MG: Totally stunned. BG: We had never expected it, and it has been unbelievable. It's allowed us to increase our ambition in what the foundation can do quite dramatically. Half the resources we have come from Warren's mind-blowing generosity.
比:如果他找到一個人 能夠把事情做的特別好, 而且願意無償去做, 也許是可以的。但是我們震驚了。 美:完全震驚了。 比:我們從來不期望, 並且這真是不可思議的, 這大幅增長了我們對於 基金會能夠成就的抱負。 我們所擁有的一半資源 都來自華倫震撼人心的慷慨。
CA: And I think you've pledged that by the time you're done, more than, or 95 percent of your wealth, will be given to the foundation.
克:你好像為此承諾當你走完人生, 你自己95%的財富 都將捐給基金會。 比:是的。
BG: Yes.
克:是因為這種關係,了不起!
CA: And since this relationship, it's amazing— (Applause) And recently, you and Warren have been going around trying to persuade other billionaires and successful people to pledge to give, what, more than half of their assets for philanthropy. How is that going? BG: Well, we've got about 120 people who have now taken this giving pledge. The thing that's great is that we get together yearly and talk about, okay, do you hire staff, what do you give to them? We're not trying to homogenize it. I mean, the beauty of philanthropy is this mind-blowing diversity. People give to some things. We look and go, "Wow." But that's great. That's the role of philanthropy is to pick different approaches, including even in one space, like education. We need more experimentation. But it's been wonderful, meeting those people, sharing their journey to philanthropy, how they involve their kids, where they're doing it differently, and it's been way more successful than we expected. Now it looks like it'll just keep growing in size in the years ahead.
(掌聲) 最近,你和沃倫 都在嘗試去說服 其他的億萬富翁以及成功人士 去承諾捐助慈善事業 超過他們自己半數的財富。 現在進行的怎麼樣了? 比爾:我們大概找到了120個人 已經做出了這樣的承諾。 很棒的是我們每年都相聚討論, 你需要員工嗎,你給了他們什麽? 我們並不是嘗試使它們一樣, 慈善事業的美麗, 在於他讓人震撼的多樣性。 人們爲一些事捐助, 我們去看然後“哇” 但那很好。 慈善事業所扮演的角色 就是選擇不同的處理方式, 包括甚至在一個領域,比如教育。 我們需要更多的試驗。 但這是美好的,認識這些人, 分享他們到慈善事業中去的過程, 他們如何讓他們的孩子參與, 他們哪裡做的不同, 這件事的成功超出了我們的想像。 現在看起來這將在未來幾年中繼續增長。 美:還有讓人看到其他人
MG: And having people see that other people are making change with philanthropy, I mean, these are people who have created their own businesses, put their own ingenuity behind incredible ideas. If they put their ideas and their brain behind philanthropy, they can change the world. And they start to see others doing it, and saying, "Wow, I want to do that with my own money." To me, that's the piece that's incredible.
以慈善事業來改變, 我是說,這些人 創立了他們自己的企業, 將他們自己的創造力 融入了那些不可思議的想法。 如果他們將他們的大腦和想法 放到慈善事業中去,他們可以改變世界。 而且他們開始看見別人在做這事,於是說: ”哇,我也希望用我自己的錢做這樣的事。“ 對我而言,那就是不可思議的地方。 克:在我看來,實際上是很難
CA: It seems to me, it's actually really hard for some people to figure out even how to remotely spend that much money on something else. There are probably some billionaires in the room and certainly some successful people. I'm curious, can you make the pitch? What's the pitch?
讓一些人去想出—— 甚至如何——怎麽去花那麼多的錢 在其他的東西上。 在座可能有一些億萬富翁 也肯定有些成功人士。 我很好奇,你能做個說服演說嗎?是什麽? 比爾:這是我們做過的最讓人充實的事情。
BG: Well, it's the most fulfilling thing we've ever done, and you can't take it with you, and if it's not good for your kids, let's get together and brainstorm about what we can be done. The world is a far better place because of the philanthropists of the past, and the U.S. tradition here, which is the strongest, is the envy of the world. And part of the reason I'm so optimistic is because I do think philanthropy is going to grow and take some of these things government's not just good at working on and discovering and shine some light in the right direction.
你死後也無法將錢帶走, 而且如果對你的孩子也不好, 讓我們一起集思廣益 看看我們能做什麽。 這個世界相比於過去好很多 是因為過去的那些慈善家; 而美國這方面的傳統,是最強大的, 是世界所羡慕的。 我很樂觀,有一部份原因 是因為我確實認為慈善事業會成長 而且會接下一些政府 並不善於處理以及發現的事, 然後發現並照亮正確的方向。 克:這個世界有嚴重的不平等,
CA: The world's got this terrible inequality, growing inequality problem that seems structural. It does seem to me that if more of your peers took the approach that you two have made, it would make a dent both in that problem and certainly in the perception of that problem. Is that a fair comment?
不斷增長的不平等的問題 看起來是結構性的。 在我看來確實如果 有更多像你們一樣的人 採取了你們同樣的做法, 便可以撼動 這個問題和 對這個問題的認知。 這樣評價公平嗎? 比:對的。如果你從最多的財富當中拿出一些
BG: Oh yeah. If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it's good. It tries to balance out, and that's just.
給那些擁有最少財富的人,這是好的。 它嘗試去平衡,那是公正的。 美:但是你改變整個系統。
MG: But you change systems. In the U.S., we're trying to change the education system so it's just for everybody and it works for all students. That, to me, really changes the inequality balance.
在美國,我們嘗試改變教育系統, 對每一個人都公正, 並且對所有的學生都有效。 對我而言,這真正地改變 這個不平等的平衡。 比:這是最重要的。
BG: That's the most important. (Applause)
(掌聲) 克:好的,我相信大部份坐在這裡的人
CA: Well, I really think that most people here and many millions around the world are just in awe of the trajectory your lives have taken and the spectacular degree to which you have shaped the future. Thank you so much for coming to TED and for sharing with us and for all you do.
以及世界上數百萬的人 都很敬畏你們的生活軌跡, 以及你們對未來的巨大改變。 非常感謝你們來到 TED, 感謝分享以及你們所做的一切。 比:謝謝。 美:謝謝。
BG: Thank you. MG: Thank you. (Applause)
(掌聲)
BG: Thank you. MG: Thank you very much. BG: All right, good job. (Applause)
比:謝謝。 美:非常感謝。 比:幹得漂亮。 (掌聲)