Talk:Belgium/Archive 3

message: Obviously, this website  should be taken into account.
:You're absolutely serious? Belgium exists as much as The United States of America exists. Sneakernets 01:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A Misleading Article

message: The great majority of Wikipedia entries on Belgian cities, provinces, rivers etc suffer from two great ills.
* Redundant information: most irritatingly, some busybodies like to add the French, German, Spanish or even Italian names of Belgian places, just because those names exist. 
This is against normal Wikipedia standards. The English Wikipedia entries on London and Paris should not mention the French name for London and the Italian name for Paris. To an Englishman seeking information about the city, this is not relevant. In articles on Belgian places, it can even be downright misinforming: adding the French name for Gent or the Dutch name for Namur could lead people to think that both places are bilingual. Or that German is an official language there. 
Only the 19 boroughs of Brussels (and every street, museum or church within them) are bilingual and should therefore always be referred to by both names. Ironically, precisely those places are now always referred to only in French!
* Hypertranslations: that is, translating what cannot and/or should not be translated. In many articles on Flemish cities, for instance, the name 'Grote Markt' is translated as 'central market square' or something similar. It would be very good to add that description, but people will really need the Dutch name 'Grote Markt' to find that precise place in towns like Sint-Niklaas. Sometimes the term "Grand'Place" is used for that Flemish town! Imagine a poor American looking for information on the Grand'Place in Sint-Niklaas, or even Saint-Nicholas.
More disturbing is the English translations of Flemish (and Dutch) provinces: Americans have heard of Flanders, but not of Oost-Vlaanderen and Vlaams-Brabant. As a consequence, there is no English name for them, and that is wonderful: no need to change names, no problems of confusion. Alas, contributors to Wikipedia have decided to make up their own translations and force-feed them on the British and Americans: "Flemish Brabant" (though not "Walloon Brabant", amazingly), East Flanders and South Holland! 
This only adds up to confusion, as it makes it necessary to explain that East Flanders is located in the western half of Flanders, and South Holland is in the middle of the Netherlands! To use the real names only would avoid such confusion.
Both the redundant information and the hypertranslations were blatantly against Wikipedia standards last time I checked.
Derek Christopher Manderfeld 84.198.160.158 08:21, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What is also against Wikipedia standards is to change what you have written on a discussion page after an answer had been given to what you had written first.  Please answer the point instead.  Moreover, this page is over Belgium, not Belgian cities.  The last time I checked, Belgium was still a country with 3 official languages.  Otherwise, please explain why any law published in the official gazette (Belgisch Staatsblad - Moniteur Belge) need to be published in the 3 languages (although one could discuss for the German language since it doesn't happen much in pratice.  If you think that changes need to happen on the Flemish cities, please proceed.  And please register as a Wikipedia contributor first.  --Lebob-BE 10:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundant information and incorrect (or unnecessary) translations 

message: An anon IP contributor, asumedly Vb, modified "Belgium and the Netherlands had a distinguishable course of history from sixteenth century onwards." into "Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had a distinguishable course of history from sixteenth century onwards." I assume this to be an error: the present-day countries Belgium and Luxemburg had a largely identical course of history for two more centuries. One might write "Belgium and Luxembourg had a course of history distinguishable from that of the Netherlands from sixteenth century onwards", and so I did. Perhaps however, this statement is not perfectly correct either and since the article is 'Belgium', and the further explained course of history is thus that of Belgium (and its relations with the Netherlands), one might go back towards the original text rather than elaborating about for this article assumedly irelevant specificities. — SomeHuman 01 Jun2007 03:06 (UTC)
:You are right.  The preceding phrasing forgot about Luxembourg.  But your change is an improvement. Vb 06:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg 

message: You're invite to discuss a new series of vector maps to replace those currently used in Country infoboxes: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries#New European vector maps. Thanks/wangi 13:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New European vector maps