Weddings can be stressful occasions. The closer the big day approaches, the more wound-up everyone involved gets - the bride-to-be throws tantrums if every small detail of the preparations isn’t perfect; the bride’s father wants to take over the whole affair and run it himself, without consulting the happy couple; the bridegroom’s mother, losing her son to a woman who doesn’t come up to her own high standards, interferes at every turn。
婚礼一般都会给人带来压力。婚礼的日子越近,参与的人们就会变得越混乱——准新娘会因为某个小细节不完美而发飙;新娘的父亲可能没有征得新人同意就要接管一切婚礼事务;而新郎的母亲则可能会因为要把儿子交给一个没有达到自己高标准的女人而趁机搅局。
The English language now has words for all three of them: the pushy father is a ’dadzilla’, the possessive mother a ’mumzilla’, and any obnoxious bride-to-be is a ’bridezilla’。
英语里对这三类人都有了称呼:强势的父亲叫做“爸爸哥斯拉”,不想对儿子放手的妈妈叫做“妈妈哥斯拉”,而吹毛求疵惹人厌的准新娘就叫做“新娘哥斯拉”。
This last was the coinage that started the trend, in the USA in the mid 1990s, and it can cover the whole range of bridely imperfections, from spitefulness to bridesmaids to wedding-present greed. It can be applied to bridegrooms too。
“新娘哥斯拉”是这一系列称呼的开创者,在20世纪90年代中期最先在美国出现,这个称呼可以涵盖准新娘的各种劣行,从对伴娘不友善到贪图婚礼礼物均在其中。同时,这一称呼也可用语新郎。
The word was based, of course, on ’Godzilla’, the name of a fearsome dinosaur-like monster originally created for a Japanese film in 1954.
这个词的来源自然就是“哥斯拉(Godzilla)”了,这是1954年的一部日本电影名,指的是一种长得像恐龙、阴森恐怖的怪物。