The present article discusses the use of lexical search strategies in translation by adult learners of English as a foreign language. The investigation follows up an analysis of learners’ use of grammatical knowledge in translation. The data are informants’ thinking aloud protocols, which have been subject to qualitative analysis. The present article concentrates on four of the study’s ten informants and is as such a pilot study. In the article the authors concentrate on lexical search strategies, on a description of the cognitive framework within which the informants work, a description of different types of search strategies, and on illustrating that the strategies of reformulation and spontaneous associations are the most common strategies employed by our informants.