Department of Interpreting and Translation (DIT) of the University of Bologna, Italy
Abstract
T he Spanish dubbing of The West Wing has been acknowledged as one of the best dubbings of a T V drama
series in Spain. T his article focuses on the dubbing of Episode #10 from The West Wing (1999), entitled “In
Excelsis Deo”, a Christmas special episode brimming with cultural references, intertextual references, register
switchings, close-ups, and all the ingredients that are usually accounted for in dubbing. T his study shows an
analysis of the quality of dubbing in just one episode of this mainstream American T V series dubbed into
Spanish. In order to do so, a qualitative analysis according to the episode’s adherence to a checklist of
dubbing standards, compiled in Chaume (2012), but taken from some other authors (Whitman-Linsen, 1992,
among others), has been carried out