Dubbing a TV drama series. The case of "The west wing"

The Spanish dubbing of The West Wing has been acknowledged as one of the best dubbings of a TV drama series in Spain. This 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. This study shows an analysis of the quality of dubbing in just one episode of this mainstream American TV 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.