Make it snappy is an idiom used to encourage someone to hurry up. However, snap is also the colloquial noun for an informal photograph. So when LOS make it snappy this means an opportunity to improve your language skills by studying a selection of pictures personal to us – and there’s no hurry at all. We believe that the best way to learn new things is to make them your own. Simply check out the stories with each snap and get a good understanding of the relevant vocabulary.
This is the 2005 WTA Tour World Championships in Los Angeles. The best eight ladies were invited to participate in this prestigious contest ($ 3,000,000 prize money for the tournament) supported by the Sony Ericsson and Octagon companies. As an active tennis writer and commentator I was invited to LA to cover this event for the Russian media. At the end of each day’s play we were allowed to meet the best tennis players at the press conference and also to arrange one-to-one interviews (1). In this picture you can see me and my two American journalist colleagues answering questions in the press center (2) and helping the media to get more inside information on the players. The secret is that my American colleagues and, of course, I speak perfect Russian. That helps us to get exclusive information from certain tennis players, some of which we were sharing during this press conference. We didn’t even need dictaphones (3) to record the ladies’ answers as we would remember every single word. We are trying to keep a serious face in this picture,when we actually want to laugh at the idea of us being on the other end of the microphone (4) for a change. A nice memory of a good feeling of joy and professional friendship.
What do the highlighted expressions mean in Russian?
- one-to-one interview = эксклюзивное интервью
- press center = пресс-центр
- dictaphone = диктофон
- microphone = микрофон
Did you know that ‘WTA’ stands for Women’s Tennis Association?
Abbreviations such as ‘WTA’ are found in many language registers.
Complete the following lesson to learn and practise a number of sport abbreviations.
Sofia Zigmund, LOS Consultant
