This paper aims to demonstrate that when we study various translations of one play from the point of view of their getting old we always need to see the translation in a concrete social and cultural target context. Consequently, the observations are true only in the Finnish theatre context. However, it seems probable that similar tendencies can be detected in other cultures. The differences are due to the different pace of development of theatre as a part of the history of culture in a specific country. The examples described are culled from the Finnish translations of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. The author compares them by analyzing differences in lexicon, in syntax and in pragmatics.