公众人物毕业演讲 第196期:苏珊沃西基2014在约翰霍普金斯大学(9)

 　　We realized online video was a new media

　　我们认识到 网络视频是一种新媒体

　　that it could unleash¹ the creativity of people all over the world

　　它能释放出世界各地人们的创造性

　　and also spark the curiosity of people who wanted to watch them

　　也能激发出观看者的好奇心

　　And even though we knew this was early, it had the potential to be big

　　我们知道 虽然现在还很早 但它的潜力肯定是无限大的

　　But soon after we had our initial success with Google Video

　　但就在谷歌视频取得初步成功后不久

　　another site launched

　　另一个网站上线了

　　YouTube

　　YouTube

　　And it started growing faster

　　它增长得更快

　　a lot faster

　　快很多

　　And all of a sudden

　　突然间

　　we saw our newfound success slipping away

　　我们刚刚建立的成功就这样溜走了

　　And just after we thought we were winning

　　就在我们刚刚看到胜利曙光的时候

　　we found out that we were losing

　　我们却发现 自己已经失败了

　　We were scared and confused

　　我们很害怕 很困扰

　　Very quickly, I had to make a tough call

　　我需要快速作出一个艰难的决定

　　Do we pretend that things are okay and try to fix them?

　　我们是应该假装一切正常 尝试进行改善

　　And continue to build a Google Video and hope we catch up?

　　继续着手谷歌视频 尝试迎头赶上

　　Or do we admit our failure

　　还是应该承认失败

　　and look to acquire YouTube

　　寻求兼并YouTube

　　a company with no revenue

　　这家没有收入

　　lots of legal liability

　　法律责任众多

　　it was only a year old

　　只有一年历史

　　and pay 1.6 billion for it?

　　还要价16亿美元的公司

　　And just as we are making this decision as if it were not hard enough

　　在我们做这个艰难决定的同时

　　an industry veteran and Internet investor

　　一位从事互联网投资的行业老手

　　published a well read article saying

　　发表了一篇广为流传的文章

　　only a moron would buy YouTube

　　说只有傻子才会买YouTube

　　Well, you know how this ended

　　你们知道最终的结果是怎样的

　　I guess you can call me a moron

　　你们或许可以把我称作傻子

　　But I had to go to our founders and our board

　　不过我必须去找创始人和董事会

　　and tell them the product that we spent so much time building Google Video was losing

　　告诉他们 我们花大量时间打造的谷歌视频失败了

　　and we would have to spend over 1 billion and a half to fix the mistake

　　我们需要花超过15亿美元来修正这一错误

　　It was painful, it was public

　　这很痛苦 这是公开的

　　it was one of the hardest decisions that I've had to make

　　也是我要做的最艰难的决定之一

1 unleash   

vt.发泄，发出；解带子放开

参考例句：

• They hope to create allies to unleash against diseases,pests,and invasive species.他们希望创造出一些新群体来对付疾病、害虫和一些有侵害性的物种。
• Changing water levels now at times unleash a miasma of disease from exposed sewage.如今，大坝不时地改变水位，从暴露的污水释放出了疾病瘴气。