David Wood (UCL, London) "The Andes on the Small Screen: The Cultural Politics of Multilingual Translation"

About

This talk is part of the seminar series of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Wed 21 October 2026, 5pm (UK time). This event will be in person and online. You can follow it online here: https://tinyurl.com/yzm5d7k2 Abstract: This paper addresses the cultural politics of multilingual translation in documentary films made in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador by European and North American television networks during the 1950s-1960s to publicise the International Labour Organisation’s Andean Programme. Technical Assistance films including The Forgotten Indians (1956) and Kantatiskiwa: Le jour se lève (1963) were rarely shown in the Andean region itself but circulated widely on European television. Drawing on recent research at the ILO archive, I ask how TV channels’ use of subtitling, dubbing and over-voicing solved practical transborder communication issues but also encoded complex cultural dynamics of extractivism, coloniality, worker solidarity and diplomacy. I further reflect on these long-forgotten films’ potential present-day resonances, based on recent archival and community screenings I have organised in La Paz (Bolivia) and Puno (Peru). David Wood is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at UCL, London.