This article analyses the translation from English into Spanish of directive utterances formed with ‘will’ and its derivatives, selected from the dialogues of five English novels translated into Spanish. Constructions with ‘will’ are considered to be problematic for translators, since it is not clear if they manifest a volitional modality or simple future tense, making it difficult to interpret their illocutionary force. Based on Mulder’s 4-D model (1998), a classification is offered of different types of construction with will. The model is likewise used to describe translators’ decisions on reformulating the utterances in Spanish. Finally, in order to gauge the relative weight of surface features of the original utterances versus linguistic conventions governing directive utterances in Spanish, the translated directives are contrasted with formal characteristics of directives in spoken Spanish, as described by Mulder (1998), García Vizcaino (1998) and Ballesteros Martín (2001).