section of a thesis represents the whole text. It is the first thing that the readers will read and decides whether the readers will read the text as a whole or not. As a summary of the whole text, it is comprehensible that in writing abstracts, authors may put a lot of information compactly. Moreover, it is important to ensure that the abstract section is well delivered. Move analysis of an abstract can help authors to determine whether the abstracts accomplish necessary rhetorical actions. However, analysis of rhetorical moves of abstracts written in two languages is still scarce. Therefore, this study aims to investigate rhetorical moves patterns realized in abstracts of theses and dissertations in Indonesian and their translations in English. Hyland's (2000) five-move analysis model was used to analyze rhetorical moves patterns of 60 thesis and dissertation abstracts in social science taken from a university's online repository. This study reaches a conclusion that differences in education level may affect move and step realization in thesis or dissertation abstracts. From that point, authors should start to also include other moves such as introduction, purpose, and conclusion in their abstracts.