Illustrating the different stages of the super-titling of two of Goethe’s plays, Faust I and II, from their inception to the production created by Robert Wilson in 2015, this article offers a panorama of the history of surtitles, developed in a recent article in the Guide du sur-titrage au théâtre, published by the author, Laurent Mulhelsein, and Pierre-Yves Diez on the website of the Maison Antoine Vitez. Stagecraft demands that surtitles be made by the ear and the eye, a task facilitated by the early software, Torticoli, that permitted topping. It was recently replaced by a more sophisticated software program, Opus, that allows the titles to be edited interlinearly. The translator then cuts up the text to be performed, prioritizing information into coherent and immediately legible titles. The writer of surtitles cannot, however, rely on a prior translation for help. The example of Goethe’s text provides an understanding of why he cannot simply follow the text literally but must also surtitle words, situations, and images at the same time, demonstrating how this type of translation is different from translating for the stage and the actor, which itself is different from literary translation.