Many translation problems can be traced back to lack of awareness of genres and the contrasts between genres in different cultures. Developing this conscious declarative knowledge is particularly important for inverse translation. Knowledge of genres and contrastive rhetoric allows translators to organize language and cultural information in an accessible format that can be drawn on when needed. If translation into English as an international language is to be successful, the translator should develop awareness of "standardized" genres, changing genres. Contrastive rhetoric is a useful tool for translator trainers, providing parallel texts of comparable genres as models for their students. The author proposes a genre-based syllabus for teaching language for translators and inverse translation from Spanish to English. This syllabus has been designed bearing in mind a translation and discourse-based, student-oriented pre-syllabus.