This paper assesses the degree to which established practices in terminology can provide the translation industry with the lexical means to support mediation of information between languages, especially where such mediation involves modification. The effects of term variation, collocation and sublanguage phraseology present problems of term choice to the translator. Current term resources cannot help much with these problems; however, tools and techniques are discussed which, in the near future, will offer translators the means to make appropriate choices of terminology.