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Medecins Sans Frontieres, 無國界醫生 in Chinese, has held a photo exhibition "Urban Survivors" in Hong Kong, inviting people to a journey through five slums in Nairobi [Kenya], Karachi [Pakistan], Johannesburg [South Africa], Dhaka [Bangladesh] and Port-au-Prince [Haiti] where MSF is actively running projects.

The photo exhibition used both Chinese and English to highlight the critical humanitarian and medical needs that exist in urban settings, with great photos from award-winning NOOR photographers!

HOW GOOD IT IS

1. Title of the exhibition

The English title of the exhibition was "Urban Survivors".  The noun, Survivors,  gave the first impression to the audience that it was about people exist in spite of a dangerous event. 

However, its Chinese title was made with a small change, it used a verb, 求生, which meaned to seek to survive, it emphasized how people to seek to survive during a dangerous event.  This small change was brilliant, the exhibition therefore became so attractive. 

2. The name of the organization

The name of the organization was Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF, in fact, there were not too many Chinese peoples knew what this foreign name was about. 

On the other hand, it used 5 simple Chinese characters as its name, 無國界醫生

• 無  means no
• 國界 means national boundaries
• 醫生 means doctors

This is a very very good Chinese name, with simply 5 Chinese characters, it delivers the following important ideas to the audience immediately:

• it is a non-profit, non-government organization
• it is about professionals from various regions selflessly devoted their time, energy and expertise
• it is about critical humanitarian and medical needs
• it is a global organization
• it needs help from you too, please support it

You just learned 7 Chinese characters today, please support 無國界醫生 if you feel this article is interesting.  For more information: http://www.msf.org.hk/urbansurvivors/#.UHpzUxgh0fo

Author: AC Chan

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