I guess it didn’t bother GL though (cf. the Neimoidians, whose voice actors were deliberately told to mimic line readings by non-English-speaking actors saying the lines phonetically.)
Well I mean, to play Devil’s Advocate here, I would imagine Neimoidians might not speak English as their native tongue and they do have very odd mouths so I would assume they would speak English pretty awkwardly.
http://www.davechen.net/2012/02/racism-stereotypes-phantom-menace-star.html
In a 1999 article for the Boston Review, Alan Stone corroborates Gottlieb’s take on things. He also identifies one of the reasons why Lucas got himself in trouble: he made the aliens English-speaking. Unlike aliens from the previous Star Wars films (see: Chewbacca, the Ewoks, all the people in the Cantina scene), the aliens in this film spoke our language and had accents and other characteristics reminiscent of the ones found in ethnic stereotypes:
What has made my student and many other cultists of his generation feel betrayed is the new ingredient in Lucas’s recipe: aliens who, unlike any of the previous exotic life forms, suggest racist stereotypes. The evil henchmen in this story seem to be Fu Manchu style Asians, and the primitive Gungan people who live under the sea suggest old Hollywood stereotypes of African-Americans.
Exactly. Hiring non-English-speakers to voice the Neimoidians wouldn’t have been a bad idea per se, but doing that and then having English-speaking actors imitate those voices for the final cut is rather too close to Charlie Chan-style old Hollywood yellowface.