This article suggests a definition of song lyrics translation as a text that is similar to its source in aspects relevant to its target culture presentation as staged narrative to music. This is based on the skopos view that a functional translation must be translated according to the purpose of the transfer. The presentation of a musical comedy song can be seen as involving levels of context: a staged performance, a narrative co-text, and the verbally empty rhetorical shape of the music, all of them cohering in a multimedial message. The translator’s work can be seen pragmatically as adaptation to the aspects of the original context which are present for the new receptors. An analysis of the three Scandinavian translations of the musical My Fair Lady shows that even when translating for a purpose and context similar to that of the source text, many differences in choices of factual detail and context-related explication arise.