Talk:National Railway Company of Belgium

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Added company box and a small edit in text[edit]

I added a company box for the NMBS/SNCB to the text with some financial date retrieved from the anual report. Based on the data in the report, I also changed the sentence that passenger transport in Belgium is profitable to the the NMBS is subsidised, because that is simply (at this moment) not profitable. The passenger devision of the group reported, even with almost €800 milion in government subsidies, an operating loss of €64 milion and an net loss of €80 milion over 2005. 

Crownsteler 18:58, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why NMBS/SNCB ?[edit]

I don't understand, why it's called NMBS/SNCB. On the official website, english version, I just see SNCB and not NMBS/SNCB. Furthermore, on the new SNCB Europe website, it is also called SNCB. Same goes for the website of Eurostar and Thalys ( see sources below ). So looks like the name use in English is SNCB. I suggest therefore, to change the name to SNCB.

http://www.b-rail.be/main/E/

http://www.b-europe.com/Travel

http://www.eurostar.com/UK/us/leisure/travel_information/before_you_go/railteam.jsp

http://www.thalys.com/be/en/about-thalys/corporate —Preceding unsigned comment added by Le Liegeois (talk • contribs) 14:57, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Belgium is a country with 3 official languages, and 2 of them are used mostly (Dutch and French), each translation has its own abbreviation. --Anthonyvdg (talk) 19:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good for Belgium, and in the French and Dutch they use thier language. This is an English wiki and on this site we use the common English name. See Talk:Brussels-Capital Region/NamingArchive3 --213.219.161.103 (talk) 06:10, 5 October 2010 (UTC)n English name.[reply]
I think the bigger question is : why do they use SNCB on international sites when they can use b-rail like in the URL. It is possible that the naming in the logos will be seen as politicaly incorrect by some flemish people. Also using SNCB in english could cause confusion with the SNCF. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.235.183.247 (talk) 13:28, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Totally agree! It is SHAMEFULL that the French abbriviation is used in English! 65% of Belgian people are Flemish, so why do we use the French abbreviation for the NMBS? The french are chauvinistic a**e* who even changed the word "email" to a french version: courriel. 213.219.184.51 (talk) 12:14, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is also shameful to generalize. I understand your disdain and you are perfectly right in wanting the Flemish community to be properly represented. However, you should not lump people together in this way. The average human being is actually fairly accepting and neutral. It's pretty obvious that the language divide in Belgium is mostly political in nature seeing how linguistic communities get on more or less well in other countries.
I came to Belgium at the beginning of my teens and Dutch (!=Flemish) lessons given in secondary school are insufficient to pick up the language and it is apparently not taught early enough so it becomes natural for children despite it being an official national language. It is the same in terms of work. I was doing interim work in a branch of Electrabel and listened with interest to an employee who explained how he picked up Flemish while working. Is that possible anymore? Many of the job ads are written in Flemish and I actually find that discriminatory in that nothing should stop me using English as a crutch while picking up the lingo. Again, the problem seems to be political. I could get in a huff because Google is displayed in Flemish by default but I don't :p
Some people from France have actually made the effort of going to work in Flanders and learning the language which just proves that this is political issue. Where you see chauvinism may simply be a concern about preserving the French language against anglicisation. But it is the concern of a minority as most people in France happily use English terms and laugh at suggestions that you should say cédé instead of cd-rom. Also, would you call people in England and the USA chauvinists too because they are seemingly reluctant to learn other languages?
My advice: Ditch the media with their hateful narrative, ignore the "divide and conquer" power games of politicians and go speak with people in person. In knowing someone beyond their linguistic identity you might actually get to appreciate them. That is precisely what I've done and it's done me a world of good to sense that there are human beings just like me on the other side of an artificial border.
--JamesPoulson (talk) 20:20, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
English-speaking people who live in Belgium have always called it SNCB, probably because they are more likely to know French than Flemish. And French is the more "international" of the two local languages. I lived in Brussels and I never heard anyone call it NMBS in English, though of course people are aware that that is the Flemish name for it. The fact that the SNCB/NMBS itself uses the French version in its English website and literature suggests that they realise this. (And by the way, I never came across anyone who was confused between the SNCB and the SNCF.) -- Alarics (talk) 12:24, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This article is called National Railway Company of Belgium not NMBS or SNCB. What actually are we debating here? Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably the objection was to the second sentence of the article ("It is usually referred to in English as "Belgian Railways" or the SNCB") and the use of SNCB rather than NMBS or SNCB/NMBS in the rest of the text. -- Alarics (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Googlefight suggests SNCB wins out slightly... Railwayfan2005 (talk) 18:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, not sure that is very relevant. The question is (since this is the English Wikipedia) what do people call it in English? My answer to that is what the article already says ("It is usually referred to in English as 'Belgian Railways' or 'the SNCB')". -- Alarics (talk) 22:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Alarics is correct. As an English-speaker living in Brussels I can testify to the fact that SNCB is the regular name used by - not only English native speakers - but indeed the (much larger) international community for whom the lingua franca is English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.173.162.145 (talk) 09:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The NMBS/SNCB is now using NMBS/SNCB as their official name on their English-language website. See also http://www.belgianrail.be/en/Default.aspx. --82.157.38.85 (talk) 23:23, 24 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

yes exactly, the name used by the company in foreign languages like English and even German is quite inconsistent. I've also read news articles where just the Flemish name was used. Clearly an expat living in Antwerp will also refer to the company as just NMBS and not SNCB. Furthermore, I doubt that most Flemish speakers would even know that SNCB is the translation of NMBS in French, and vice versa. So as to not offend anyone, i suggest the official abbreviation NMBS/SNCB is used throughout the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.235.159.178 (talk) 23:01, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good choice :) --JamesPoulson (talk) 20:20, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

National Belgian Railway Company[edit]

Does anyone actually call it "National Belgian Railway Company" or "National Railway Company of Belgium", or is that just a slightly painful way of trying to get around the fact that English speakers with no interest in Belgian language politics call it SNCB (cf English speakers using the German name for SBB rather than French or Italian options), and some Dutch-speaking Belgians might not like this so want us to use something else instead? Wheeltapper (talk) 11:14, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, nobody actually calls it that. I lived in (bilingual) Brussels for 18 years and everyone always called it the SNCB in English conversation except for Dutch-speakers. In print, I think the Brussels Bulletin (English-language news magazine) calls it "SNCB/NMBS" or possibly sometimes "NMBS/SNCB". On the English pages of its own website is calls itself NMBS/SNCB. -- Alarics (talk) 19:40, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So would it be fair to say that usage is:
  • SNCB - English speakers/writers worldwide, and French-speaking Belgians.
  • NMBS - Dutch-speaking Belgians.
  • NMBS/SNCB or SNCB/NMBS - Belgians using English when a Dutch-speaking Belgian might see it and get the hump if it just said SNCB.
(I did once see SNCB's French counterpart called something like "National Society of French Railways" on a US news website. I can see how they got there, but...). Wheeltapper (talk) 20:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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"B-rail" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

The redirect B-rail has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 20 § B-rail until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 23:03, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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