This book treats the functional boundaries of opera surtitles and aims to determine how these boundaries affect the making and publishing of surtitles. The functional borders studied here are the source text, the target text, the medium of publication and its place in the performance, the reading situation and the role of the translator as one creator and publisher of the surtitles. In addition to analysing authentic surtitles, the author places them in a wider cultural context treating their status in the opera institution and in opera productions and discussing their effect on the public image of opera. Obviously, surtitles have made opera more democratic and easier to approach, since it's no longer necessary to study the piece at home in advance; nowadays, opera can be understood by everybody. The textual research data consists of three authentic surtitles made for two different productions of Richard Strauss' opera "Salome". One of the translations is from German into English; the two others are into Finnish.