Ha! I know the guy who did that recording. Good friend of mine. And they also sped his voice up a bit so it sounds a bit Mickey Mouse-ish.
I’ve been a freelance voice-over guy in Taiwan for 17 years now. You name it, I’ve seen it and recorded it. I haven’t worked in the English teaching materials part of the industry for many years now, but back in the good old days it was a struggle to get clients and studios to accept changing scripts to fix grammar and other problems. Very early on I insisted on 100% correct English, but eventually you get worn down and in the end I just said ‘fuck it’ and gave them what they wanted. If you want crap, then crap is what you’ll get.
Unfortunately, the problem of poor English scripts isn’t confined to just teaching materials. I’ve recorded government briefings, company profiles, TV commercials, and documentaries with horrible, atrocious English. Even in the last few months I had to record a script from a mainland Chinese client who simply fed the Mandarin thru Google Translate or a similar online service because he didn’t trust the local translation agency. 
It was entertaining to say the least doing the actual recording. The engineer and I had a few good chuckles over it.
One gets paid for one’s time in the booth/in front of the microphone. Not for extra effort like editing, which is usually unappreciated at best and considered “wrong” at worst. As long as you are the voice talent, and not the editor, or whatever, just record it.
Of course, that is a good reason to have multiple voices at one’s disposal, just in case you don’t want something to go public in your ordinary speaking voice.
Hard not to contribute to this thread since I’m writing a video script right now. So, speaking as the end customer of such a video, the right thing to do would be to notify the agency that the script has grammatical errors, and recommend that they notify the customer of this, as it would probably be appreciated. Of course, if the agency doesn’t give a shit, then finish the job but avoid working for them in the future.
My solution has been to record the script as given to me, but to inform the recording studio that the script does have a lot of errors in it. I’ve then offered my services to edit the script (with maybe even a cut for the recording studio) that they can then offer the client. They’ve accepted my offer a few times.
I sometimes listen to this radio station in the car. It’s funny hearing their station identification…one person saying “apple” as one would normally say it, followed immediately by another guy saying “ay pull” (the common local pronunciation). You would think the sound engineer splicing the thing together would notice the inconsistency.
E-da hospital produced a DVD narrated by a native-sounding English speaker. Professional voice recording with bad grammar, indeed.
[quote=“ironlady”]One gets paid for one’s time in the booth/in front of the microphone. Not for extra effort like editing, which is usually unappreciated at best and considered “wrong” at worst. As long as you are the voice talent, and not the editor, or whatever, just record it.
[/quote]
I’d never do it. I have standards.
I think a lot of organizations, wherever they may be located, are lacking one of these specialists on their payroll, or if they have one, they don’t seem to get good use out of that employee.
That might be part of the problem.
Edit: As to the issue of the thread, I can’t say that any of the main options put forth–refusing the job, taking the job but pointing out the flaws, or just recording the document as is–is wrong. To me, all three courses of action seem to fall within an ethically acceptable range.
So to me, the only thing left would be what each individual thinks is best for him or her.
[quote=“BigJohn”][quote=“ironlady”]One gets paid for one’s time in the booth/in front of the microphone. Not for extra effort like editing, which is usually unappreciated at best and considered “wrong” at worst. As long as you are the voice talent, and not the editor, or whatever, just record it.
[/quote]
I’d never do it. I have standards.[/quote]
There are standards, and there is making a living.
If you worked full-time doing voiceover or recording work (as I used to for a time while in Taiwan), you’d be known by the studios and the major clients. If you are “difficult to work with”, you wouldn’t get further work, or at least you’d be called after everyone else on the list, if at all. Or, in your scenario, you would refuse to work for those clients. Well, that would mean you’d be turning down work by virtually everyone. It was more unusual (at least at that time, and I doubt it’s changed substantially) to get a script that was accurate than to get one that had errors. This went double for projects that involved textbooks or English listening tests.
[quote=“ironlady”][quote=“BigJohn”][quote=“ironlady”]One gets paid for one’s time in the booth/in front of the microphone. Not for extra effort like editing, which is usually unappreciated at best and considered “wrong” at worst. As long as you are the voice talent, and not the editor, or whatever, just record it.
[/quote]
I’d never do it. I have standards.[/quote]
There are standards, and there is making a living.
If you worked full-time doing voiceover or recording work (as I used to for a time while in Taiwan), you’d be known by the studios and the major clients. If you are “difficult to work with”, you wouldn’t get further work, or at least you’d be called after everyone else on the list, if at all. Or, in your scenario, you would refuse to work for those clients. Well, that would mean you’d be turning down work by virtually everyone. It was more unusual (at least at that time, and I doubt it’s changed substantially) to get a script that was accurate than to get one that had errors. This went double for projects that involved textbooks or English listening tests.[/quote]
I understand. Then I would get out of that line of work. I am not going to make a mockery of my own language - which I love -
for money if I have other more ethical choices. For example, I have quite stupid teaching gigs before and turned down work at McDonalds because I think their food is toxic.
People make fun of the lack of professionalism in certain aspects of the EFL business here but then they go along with it. Part of the problem? If people made more of a stink they would have to change things. 
Oh, I think they might well change things, so I try not to make too big of a stink.