Redefine Failure as a Bilingual Speaker
By Yiying Lu
This article was first published in the Remote Confidence newsletter.
Up until now, I am probably best known for having designed the Fail Whale that appears when Twitter goes down. Coincidentally, it also turns out that I also have a lot to say about failure as a bilingual public speaker.
Our worst fear is often failure. But what if failure was actually a good thing?
“Failure is success in progress,” as Albert Einstein once said. As speakers and as people, we have to be willing to go try things that are hard. Over time, we’ll get comfortable with those things, and we’ll build skills. Speaking publicly is no exception! However, to get good at anything, we must be willing to fail. You can’t do hard things without failing.
In the last 10 years, I have traveled and spoken at international conferences on Design, Creativity & Innovation in front of more than 25,000+ people in live audiences in over 15 countries. But this all started from a spectacular failure back in 2005.
While I was attending university in Sydney, I returned to my hometown Shanghai for the summer holidays. Around the same time, a group of professors from 5 top Australian Universities including the University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, and RMIT University, came to Shanghai to do an education exchange visit during the Shanghai Biennale, the highest-profile contemporary art event in Shanghai and the most established art biennale in China. The Australian Education International advertises in the network that they needed someone to be a Real-Time bilingual translator during the visit. I volunteered. The first day, they had five professors from each school going to a class of more than 500 students, and none of the professors spoke any Chinese. Far worse, none of them had ever been translated before, so they didn’t break their talks into small chunks. They’d say paragraphs at a time (they each had five to eight minutes to speak) and then look at me.
The first time this happened I froze. My mind went completely blank. With more than 500 students’ eyes on me, I was nervous, I barely translated a thing. This went on for a full hour. After the session, I remember I was utterly embarrassed, but the teachers and the coordinator all told me it was okay.
Afterward, I was devastated and upset — — blaming myself for not being capable enough. I felt so bad that I thought I won’t be able to get over it. But my parents did something that helped me. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is the first time you are being a real-time translator. You are doing something new.” They said, “And now you are at rock bottom. There is nowhere to go but up. See what you can learn!”
My parents told me it was okay to fail. They gave me permission to fail and I failed spectacularly. But they (and the teachers) made me go back to translate again.
The next day I woke up and did it again with the professors at another university in Shanghai. Every day I got a little better. I was so happy to see the incremental improvements. I was so happy to see how much I had improved by the fifth day. It was an utterly difficult experience, but I definitely came out and felt like a new person.
Recently, Women Talk Design, an organization that elevates brilliant talks by women and non-binary people, invited me to share my unique perspective and lessons learned as a bilingual speaker.
Since I speak both English and Chinese. I started to look for inspiration from the Chinese character for “Failure” which is “败”. And I discovered a new perspective to redefine failure:
The Chinese written character for “Failure” is “败”. It is made up of 2 charcaters：On its left, “贝” meaning “treasure”(originally from the characters “鼎” meaning “expensive chalice”)，On its right, “攵” meaning “hand” holding a “wand or a stick”. So in the ancient days meaning of “败” is more neutral than what it is mean today, it actually means “destroy” — — “毁坏”：There’s no making without breaking. You see, you have to destroy your precious old image of yourself that you hold on so tightly, in order to gain the confidence to create something new.
Embrace failure. It is the death of the old, and the beginning of the new. It can teach you so much. And you’ll look back, years later, and often it will be funny. Like Steve Allen once said: “Tragedy plus time equals comedy”. Years later, you might be able not only to see the valuable lesson you’ve learned but also maybe be able to laugh at yourself. You will also be able to use your failures to inspire and help other people. You’ll be able to share those failures and what you learned from them, as I am sharing now. Your failures might become part of your autobiography.
Know that it’s okay to fail big, and it is also okay to want to achieve big things, and drive. But the one thing I have learned from my life is that great work comes from resilience, and resilience comes rising from failure every failure is a step closer to success.
Don’t be afraid to try, and fail. Embrace your failures. Also remind yourself, if you fail — forgive yourself, be kind to yourself. Then get up, start reinventing yourself, keep rising from your old self, and become a better and new you. And Repeat.
Celebrate your failures. As they are building blocks and focus on perseverance, positive mindset and hard work to achieve what we want in life.
Idea for Action: Think about one of your failures. What can it teach you?
Write down three ideas.
重新定义失败
陆怡颖
迄今为止，我最广为认知的作品之一是设计了Twitter早期的宕机页面 — — 失败鲸（Fail Whale）。作为一个双语演讲者，我对于“失败”，却有一些独到的见解。
在生活和工作中，我们最害怕的往往是失败。但是，塞翁失马，焉知非福。其实失败并不是你想象中那样可怕，说不定它其实是一件好事呢！
爱因斯坦曾经说过：“失败是通向成功的过程。” 我们必须勇于尝试一些困难的事情。随着时间的推移，我们会逐渐适应，从而培养新的技能。演讲也不例外！然而，要想擅长任何事情，我们必须愿意面对和接受失败。所谓，不经历风雨怎么见彩虹，没有人属能随随便便成功。
在过去的10年里，我在全球20多个国家，为25,000多名的现场观众进行了数百场关于设计和创新的演讲，其中包括了 TEDx，Adobe MAX，SXSW 西南偏南，Web Summit和极客公园等大型演讲活动。但这一切要从我在2005年的一次难以忘怀的失败经历说起：
在澳大利亚悉尼上大学期间，放暑假时回到家乡上海。同一时间，来自澳大利亚的五所顶尖大学：悉尼大学、悉尼科技大学、新南威尔士大学、墨尔本大学和皇家墨尔本理工大学的教授们，来沪进行上海双年展期间的教育交流访问。上海双年展是亚洲最受瞩目的当代艺术盛会，也是中国最成熟的艺术双年展。当时，澳大利亚国际教育协会在网络上发布广告，说他们需要有人在访问期间做实时双语翻译。我便自告奋勇主动请缨了。第一天，这五所高校的每位教授会轮流给500多名学生做演讲，所有的教授都不懂中文，而且他们未曾有过和翻译共事的经历，因此没有把自己的演讲分割成小段、便于翻译员现场翻译的意识。他们每人有五到八分钟的演讲时间，其中一位教授一次说很长一段话，然后回头看着我。
面对这种情况，我愣住了，大脑一片空白。现场观众的几百双眼睛看着我，我紧张到几乎什么也没翻译出来。这样糟糕的尴尬场面持续了整整一个小时。记得在课后，教授们和工作人员都表示了他们不介意在翻译过程中出现的尴尬，但我自己却觉得无地自容。
事后，我很伤心难过，责怪自己能力不足。我觉的自己可能无法走出这一莫大失败的阴影。但是，父母的一番话却帮助了我。”不要对自己太苛刻了，这是你第一次做实时翻译。你是在做一件全新的事情。” 他们说，”而且，现在你已经到了谷底。除了向上，没有地方可去了。你现在最需要的是仔细回顾这次失败的过程，并从中这个过程里发现你的不足和需要努力的方向”
我的父母告诉我，虽然我首次面对现场观众的经历一败涂地，他们还是认可我的勇气和努力，并（还有老师）鼓励我作为挑战自我再去翻译一次。
第二天，我和五所高校的教授又去了上海的另一所大学，做了又一次实时翻译。每一天我都会有一点进步。看到渐进式的进步，我很高兴。到了第五天，我发现自己进步了很多，面对几百名现场观众，我能够自如地翻译和交流。虽然第一天彻头彻尾的失败经历，难以忘怀，但通过我之后五天的努力，我是走出了失败的阴影，感觉自己像换了一个人。
当Women Talk Design一个旨在提升女性演讲的组织，近期邀请我分享我作为一名中英双语演讲者的独特视角和经验教训。因此，我开始从中文“Failure”的汉字 “失败”的“败”中寻找灵感。在这个过程中，我发现了一个全新的视角，来重新定义 Failure — — 失败。
中文的“失败”文字为“败”。它由2个字符组成：左侧的“贝”表示“宝物”（甲骨文“败”字，像一只手拿着棍棒击打宝贵的“鼎”；金文把“鼎”旁换成“贝”），右侧的“攵”的意思是“手”握着一根“棍棒”来击打珍贵的“宝物”。因此，在古代，“败”的远古的本意是“毁坏”或者“打破”。正所谓：不破不立 — — 不破除旧的,就不能建立新的。因此，你必须摧毁你珍视的旧形象，才能获得创造新事物的信心。若非如此，你便无法真正地认识和理解失败对学习新技能的重要性。
拥抱失败，它是旧的死亡，也是新的开始。它可以教会你很多东西。而你会在多年后回过头来看，可能还会觉得很好笑。就像史蒂夫-艾伦曾经说过的那样：“悲剧加上时间等于喜剧”。多年以后，你也许不仅能看到自己在失败中学到的宝贵的教训，也许还能笑傲江湖，用自己的失败来激励和帮助别人。就像我现在分享那些失败的经历一样，你可以从自己的失败中吸取的教训。你的失败说不定会成为你自传的一章。
要知道，经历失败无妨，想要做成大事也无妨，贵在有动力，贵在坚持。但我从生活中悟出的一个道理是，任何伟大的事业的成功来自于坚持，而坚持来自于从失败中崛起，每一次新的失败都是离成功更近的一步。
不要害怕尝试，也不要害怕失败。应该重新认识和拥抱失败。同时提醒自己，即使你失败了 — — 请原谅自己，善待自己。然后站起来，开始重塑自己，不断地打破那个旧的自己，你便成为了一个更好的新的自己。
庆祝你失败的经历。因为它们是成功的奠基石，以积极的心态和努力的态度去实现我们的人生目标。
读后感：回想一下属于你的一个失败案例。它能教给你什么？ 写下三个想法。
