Glossary entry

Dutch term or phrase:

trees

English translation:

goose

Added to glossary by burak sengir
Jun 20, 2014 22:58
10 yrs ago
Dutch term

trees

Non-PRO Dutch to English Art/Literary Poetry & Literature
(...) Die gromde, die brulde en schetterde, en ze kende maar één grapje.
Weet je wat jij bent?
Je bent een traap.
Ja! (Dan lachte tante Idaliek al.)
Want je vader is een luie aap.
En je moeder was een trees.
Snap je? Trees - aap - traap.
Hahahahaha...
:))

Discussion

Barend van Zadelhoff Jun 21, 2014:
Daar was ik zelf zonder etymologiebank ook zo'n beetje op uitgekomen:

een onnozele goedmoeder
philgoddard Jun 20, 2014:
I don't know what "trees" means (some kind of insult?), but you'll probably have to come up with a whole new joke in English anyway. Something like: Your father is a jackass, your mother is a monkey, put the two together, and that makes you a junkie. But that may be too rude for the context.

Proposed translations

+1
4 hrs
Selected

goose

trees = trien / muts / dom vrouwelijk persoon

http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/treze

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/goose
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ninny
http://nl.glosbe.com/nl/en/muts

--> gape

"Your father is a lazy ape and your mother is a goose which makes you a gape!"

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Note added at 4 uren (2014-06-21 03:48:31 GMT)
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Do you know what you are?
You're a gape.
Yes you are! (and a smile on aunt Idaliek's face.)
Because your father is a lazy ape.
And your mother is a goose.
Savvy? Goose - ape - Gape
Hahahahaha...

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Note added at 5 uren (2014-06-21 04:01:31 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

(FYI: Trees, niet te verwarren hier met een NLse geliefde/vrouw van een geallieerde soldaat: "Trees heeft een Canadees.")
Note from asker:
dankjewel freek :)
Peer comment(s):

agree Barend van Zadelhoff : Yes, you could solve it this way. Not sure whether the best option for 'trees' is among them, but it doesn't matter too much.
8 hrs
If it only appears once... Dankjewel!
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
20 hrs

traipse / trapes (+see expl.)

There's something to be said about the homography between trees (NL: rhymes with trace) and trees (EN: rhymes with peas) juxtaposed with "aap" in this joke... but this is not the forum for eth(n)ical debates.

This isn't poetry - so it doesn't need to rhyme, per phil's suggestion - it just needs to be neologized [is that a word?], split and concatenated.

Nonetheless, however derogatory I find this joke to be (at several points along the spectrum), I'd opt for traipse, because I do not gather the joker is speaking positively of either the mother or father, yet is saying somehow that the person in question is a "catch" (fig.) or literally a trap (i.e. trouble waiting to happen). Doing so will mean the punchline can be preserved as well.

The solution in my estimation should be along the lines of:

traap => trap
luie aap => lazy chap
trees => traipse (or trapes)

traipse + chap = trap

This is the closest you're going to get I think - at least taking De Bo and Samyn's West Flemish Idioticon into consideration.

*If* the person being told the joke was the one being blasted, then I might switch it up deliberately as a 'yo momma' joke. That's not really the case here, but I'm going to put it here anyway for fun (see "Example sentence(s)") because it makes for a better joke IMO. Just presume the following for the 2nd sample sentence:

traap ~> trapes
luie aap => lazy ape
trees ~> trap


Otherwise, if you go with "catch" for "traap", other connotations behind "trees" in Flanders may be equally if not more offensive in English, but the literary elements relating trees and apes (trees & aap) are preserved too.

traap => catch
een luie aap => a p*ssy (sl. as in lazy coward ~ lit. cat)
trees => dumb b*tch (sl. malicious woman ~ lit. female dog)

Cat relates to dog, Ps to Bs (in terms of female genitalia), and you cross a cat and a b*tch and you get a catch.

In other words, use your better judgment. I don't like this joke, probably because the last solution is the only one that holds enough irony and interlinear relationships, but there are many ways to go about it -- specifically depending on the audience -- it seems like she wanted to draw the person in by giving them a compliment, then flipping it on them talking badly about the person's parents to go in for the punchline.

Curious what my colleagues think about this line of reasoning.

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Note added at 20 hrs (2014-06-21 19:41:59 GMT)
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Meant to add: http://www.vlaamswoordenboek.be/definities/term/treesebees
Example sentence:

Your dad was a lazy chap and your mom was a traipse. Get it? Traipse - chap - traps.

Yo' daddy was the lazy ape and yo' momma was the trap. Get it? Traps + apes make trapes.

Peer comment(s):

neutral freekfluweel : Trees is short for Thérèse. With no capital it stands for a dumb(ish) female... (Like: hij is echt een sjonnie). Btw the question is "trees", not "trees + aap"...
13 hrs
I understand this. I just find it rather remiss to disregard the context or the homography or other literary elements in the passage, as I so diligently attempted to explain. // Also trapes is 1 word already, not an attempt to combine trees+aap. See dict.
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1 day 12 hrs

tracy / chantal

My wife's cat was called trees; it is a name with ironic-bordering-on-derogatory connotations of 'aardappelmeisjes' that you could equate to the Essexy 'tracey' or something like 'chantal' in the 2000s.

so you'd get something like tracy/ape = trape, not funny in English either imho
Peer comment(s):

neutral Bryan Crumpler : Yes, this works too if the mom's name is Trees / Trac(e)y (hinting to "D*ckless Tracy", i.e., "Dick Tracy"). Or even better, "Trixie". Trapes has to be with s though. It is a singular term, respelled as traipse to avoid plurality confusion.
10 hrs
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