In this paper, the genre 'synopsis de at publishing house catalogues' is described on the basis of the multilevel model of textual classification by Ciapuscio (2002). Special attention is paid to the functional, situational, semantic, lexical and grammatical factors which are present in the use of this genre as a vehicle of communication. Secondly ,a corpus of Spanish and German examples of the genre 'sinopsis' is analysed, pointing out relevant differences at the lexical and grammatical level. Finally, some practical uses of the genre 'synopsis' in the translation class (German-Spanish) are shown.