I thought this story of what the Glossika team goes through to make their courses was interesting. Someone complained that the new recordings for Persian, done by a female speaker, were not as clear as the older incomplete ones, done by a male speaker. Michael Campbell gave this answer:
Michael Campbell wrote:Ariel, the Persian male is a PhD student in Taipei who came to our office to record. We had a deal to do the whole thing, we processed and released what he recorded from the first session, but he never showed up again leaving us with an incomplete job. At the time we had enough leeway: it wouldn't be possible for users to finish the sentences that we had released based on our production speed, however, it did happen and people started to complain because he refused to come back and we didn't get the recordings in time. We tried reaching out to other Persian speakers in Taipei but all of them refused, for fear from their government for doing something outside of their intended PhD work because there are spies from their govt here watching which makes the students extremely nervous. What we had to do was get our contact in Tehran to complete the job with her own equipment, but we had to make a trade in person at the border of Iran because it's impossible to get payments to people inside the country. It was logistically complex but we got the job done and added the rest of the sentences. Since the female was a more complete job, we eventually switched all the male sentences to the female version. Thank you for your understanding and please accept our apologies for the ordeal.