This paper offers a contrastive analysis of the audio described scripts of The Hours in English and Spanish, with a view to predicting some of the challenges that could arise when translating this type of text from English into Spanish. After arguing that audio description (AD) should be considered as a distinct text type, the paper suggest that different conventions have evolved in English and Spanish regarding both the content and expression of ADs. These differences are illustrated with reference to the English and Spanish ADs for The Hours, which are analysed at the level of the word, sentence and larger units of discourse. It is subsequently predicted that the different conventions may create difficulties for the translator both in terms of linguistic transfer and of extra-linguistic considerations such as receiver expectations. Nevertheless, such problems also occur in other translation modes and should not be considered as barriers to translating ADs form English into Spanish, which would undoubtedly bring benefits in terms of time and cost as well as allowing Spanish receivers to experience a different style of AD.