The author presents a study of lexical collocation using a corpus of academic discourse. She investigates the lexical items 'interpellate" and 'hail'. Unusual collocation patterns are uncovered for these terms in the corpus and it is suggested that these patternings, which have become entrenched in the discourse, are often an result of (poor) translation. Some suggestions are offered for retranslating these problematic terms and to reflect on translation pathways, terminological pathways, and discursive ruts.