Abstracts play a major role as time-saving and information-managing devices in our globalized world of scientific communication. In many non-Anglophone academic journals the pressure to disseminate results internationally is manifested in the requirement to write an English version of the abstract, usually a requisite for the journal to be included in international databases and citation indexes. This paper aims at investigating the main lexicogrammatical choices which contribute to the identification of rhetorical moves in research article (RA) abstracts translated into English by Spanish academics, and which are published in prestigious national journals as a requisite for those journals to be included in international databases. To carry out this analysis, three sets of texts have been compiled: (i) Spanish abstracts published in prestigious Spanish journals, (ii) their corresponding English translations published in the same journals; (iii) RA abstracts written in English by Anglophone academics (affiliated to Anglophone institutions) and published in leading international journals whose language of publication is English. The paper focuses on the discipline of Sociology, an emergent field for Spanish academics in terms of their contribution to the international arena. The ultimate aim is to explore how English translations compare with English L1 abstracts in terms of lexicogrammatical choices.