This paper deals with lexical means of general language which are also a part of the common language of science. Due to differences in collocational meanings between Croatian, German and English, both authors of scientific texts and translators face many difficulties when attempting to find proper functional translational equivalents in a target language. This part of the lexicon and lexical relations are not adequately covered in Croatian-German and Croatian-English general bilingual dictionaries and as a result, an important layer of the common language of science remains unavailable for dictionary users whose L1 is Croatian. The authors argue that improvements are needed to the lexicographic representation of collocations in general bilingual dictionaries, they provide arguments and suggestions as to how to improve the presentation of collocations in printed bilingual dictionaries by relying on computerbased methods. Furthermore, a list of verb-noun collocations for the three aforementioned languages created for the purposes of this study may serve as a basis for improving existing bilingual dictionaries as well as bilingual and multilingual e-dictionaries specializing in the general language of science, in which collocations should take a more prominent place. 146 selected examples of verb-noun collocations typically found in texts on the arts and humanities (e.g. Belege heranziehen, razmotriti znanstvene dokaze, to consider facts; Theorie herausarbeiten, razviti teoriju, to develop / formulate a theory) will show that these three languages complement each other. Furthermore, a contrastive analysis will illustrate how divergent meanings can be avoided by improving the representation of collocations typically found in the common language of science in bilingual and multilingual dictionaries of Croatian, German and English, thus making this specific layer of the lexicon more available to the dictionary user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]