I just got a Russian-language robo-call supporting a candidate for the state assembly (Betsy Butler, the incumbent). I suppose it’s not that surprising — there are a lot of Russian speakers in L.A., some understand Russian considerably better than they understand English, and some might in any event be more influenced by a pitch in Russian. And I doubtless somehow made my way on a list of Russian speakers, perhaps through having bought some Russian-language products.
But the robo-call was in very badly accented Russian, whether because the speaker spoke Russian badly, or because the voice was computer-generated. What’s the point? If you’re going to spend the effort to specially reach out to the Russian community, why not hire a native-quality Russian speaker for the short time it takes to record the call?
UPDATE: I originally said “native Russian speaker,” though of course the real point is to have someone speaking unaccented, native-quality Russian (or even something slightly accented but very easily comprehensible). One of the comments suggested that requiring that the person be a native Russian speaker might violate Title VII, so I’ve corrected this to native-quality.