This paper deals with the role of documentary research in the teaching of translation into a foreign language. The inherent difficulties in translation into a non-mother tongue are found in the 'human factor', i.e. the translator, his/her knowledge and abilities and basically in the production of the target text. The role of documentary research in the teaching of indirect translation hinges on the concept of communicative competence as a set of different sub competences formed by linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, textual competence and documentary competence, amongst others. If one considers translation activity as situated on the textual level, documentary research and management becomes a key factor in the development of textual competence, aiding the student in the task of producing texts in the target language. This 'Documentary science applied to Translation' implies not only search and storage techniques but includes contrastive text studies, i.e. the comparison of texts from the source culture and the target culture.