Day by day, the phenomenon of specialized lexical collocations (CLS) gains popularity given its frequency rate in the various bilingual thematic corpus, and of recurrence within the texts that comprise them. Thus, the particularities of this type of phraseological unit (FU) constitute a frequent object of study in the field of terminology and translation. It might be thought that by containing a term, the CLS can be accurately translated given the rigor of specialized translation. However, the translation of collocations is not equivalent to the individual translation of their constituents: it is necessary to analyze the base and collotive set to understand both parts as a whole, which conveys meaning globally. This study presents the analysis of CLS in a corpus extracted from a specialized audiovisual text (TAVE) of the documentary subgenre in its original and subtitled version. Subsequently, it presents results in light of two aspects: first, the conservation or loss of the placement character in the passage from one language to another; and second, the interpretation of the meaning of the original placement and its translation. In addition to clarifying the initial premises, this study provides a tool for the analysis of the sense of collocations based on the interpretive method of the hermeneutical circle, adapted to the field of translation. The presented proposal is characterized by its flexibility to be used in a great variety of UF not only of specialized discourse but also of general language, present in written, oral or audiovisual texts of all genres.