Literal translation
it turns me into a rambling old fool
Meaning
it drives me up the wall
Explanation
This expression describes an annoyance so persistent that it eventually wears down the nerves and clouds the mind of whoever endures it. The word rababèu denotes, in Provençal vocabulary, a person who rambles on, endlessly repeating the same words, often associated with old age or mental fatigue: becoming rababèu means losing the thread of clear thought, going round and round the same obsessive ideas without managing to escape them. The expression thus conveys the effect of a repeated annoyance or a persistent irritation that, through sheer repetition, exhausts a person's ability to think calmly, sending them into the same loop as a tired old man rambling on. The register is familiar, somewhat self-mocking, used to describe the exasperation caused by an insistent situation or person, a child repeating a request, a problem that keeps coming back, a noisy neighbour. The phrase stages the idea of an almost involuntary transformation of a reasonable person into a comic, slightly ridiculous figure.