我问乔布斯为什么希望我担任这本传记的作者。

　　“I think you’re good at getting people to talk,” he replied. That was an unexpected answer.

　　“我觉得你很擅长让别人开口说话。”他这么回答。这个答案有些出乎我的意料。

　　I knew that I would have to interview scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated,

　　我知道我必须采访很多人，这些人要么被他炒过鱿鱼，要么被他伤害过、遗弃过，抑或被他以其他方式激怒过，

　　and I feared he would not be comfortable with my getting them to talk.

　　我以为我跟这些人交谈会让乔布斯不舒服。

　　And indeed he did turn out to be skittish when word trickled back to him of people that I was interviewing.

　　的确，当我的一些采访对象的言论传到乔布斯耳中时，他表现得有些愤怒。

　　But after a couple of months, he began encouraging people to talk to me, even foes and former girlfriends.

　　但几个月后，他开始鼓励人们跟我交流，这其中甚至包括他的敌人和前女友。

　　Nor did he try to put anything off-limits.

　　他也没有对任何事情作出限制。

　　“I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was twenty-three and the way I handled that,”

　　“我做过很多并不值得自豪的事情，比如23岁时让我的女友怀了孕，以及我处理此事的方式，”

　　he said.“But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.”

　　他说，“但我没有什么不能对外袒露的。”

　　He didn’t seek any control over what I wrote, or even ask to read it in advance.

　　他从不干预我写的内容，甚至都没提前读过

　　His only involvement came when my publisher was choosing the cover art.

　　唯一和他相关的是出版商选择封面时。

　　When he saw an early version of a proposed cover treatment, he disliked it so much that he asked to have input in designing a new version.

　　当他看到第一版的封面时，他非常不喜欢，因此他要求更换新的一版。

　　I was both amused and willing, so I readily assented.

　　我同样不太喜欢，因此我迅速同意了。

　　I ended up having more than forty interviews and conversations with him.

　　我总共与他进行了差不多40次会面。

　　Some were formal ones in his Palo Alto living room, others were done during long walks and drives or by telephone.

　　其中一些是很正式的谈话，在他位于帕洛奥图的住所的客厅里进行，还有一些是在长途散步或者驱车行进的过程中完成的，或者是通过电话。

　　During my two years of visits, he became increasingly intimate and revealing,

　　在我18个月的访问中，他与我越来越亲近，也越来越愿意向我吐露心声，

　　though at times I witnessed what his veteran colleagues at Apple used to call his “reality distortion field.”

　　但是有时候我还是可以感受到他身上那种被苹果的老同事们称为“现实扭曲力场”（realitydistortionfield)的力量。

　　Sometimes it was the inadvertent misfiring of memory cells that happens to us all;

　　有时，这是我们每个人都会有的因疏忽引起的记忆错误，

　　at other times he was spinning his own version of reality both to me and to himself.

　　但有些时候，乔布斯则是在向我也向自己，编织现实在他头脑中的印象。

　　To check and flesh out his story, I interviewed more than a hundred friends, relatives, competitors, adversaries, and colleagues.

　　为了验证并充实他的故事，我采访了100多人，包括他的朋友、亲戚、对手、敌人以及同事。

　　His wife also did not request any restrictions or control, nor did she ask to see in advance what I would publish.

　　他的妻子劳伦不仅促成了本书，而且希望我的写作不受约束或控制，也没有要求提前看到书的内容。

　　In fact she strongly encouraged me to be honest about his failings as well as his strengths.

　　事实上，她还鼓励我坦率地描述乔布斯的全部：他的优点以及他的缺点。

　　She is one of the smartest and most grounded people I have ever met.

　　她是我见过的最聪明也是最理性的人之一。

　　“There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” she told me early on.

　　“他的生活以及性格中，有一部分是非常糟糕的，这是事实她早先告诉我，

　　“You shouldn’t whitewash it. He’s good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I’d like to see that it’s all told truthfully.”

　　“你不用为他掩饰。他很擅长讲故事，但他的故事本身也非常精彩，我希望看到整个故事都被如实地叙述。”

　　I leave it to the reader to assess whether I have succeeded in this mission.

　　这项使命完成得怎样，我交给读者们判断。

　　I’m sure there are players in this drama who will remember some of the events differently or think that I sometimes got trapped in Jobs’s distortion field.

　　我确信会有一些人的记忆有别于书中所述，或者有人认为我陷入了他的扭曲力场之中。

　　As happened when I wrote a book about Henry Kissinger, which in some ways was good preparation for this project,

　　在我写一本关于亨利·基辛格（HenryKissinger)的书时也有类似的经历，那本书在某种程度上为本书提供了有益的借鉴。

　　I found that people had such strong positive and negative emotions about Jobs that the Rashomon effect was often evident.

　　我发现人们对于乔布斯有着十分强烈的肯定或否定的情感，罗生门效应十分明显。

　　But I’ve done the best I can to balance conflicting accounts fairly and be transparent about the sources I used.

　　但我已尽自己所能公正地去平衡不同意见，并对信息来源做到透明。