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With the growing popularity of broadway musicals and international shows, spawning a multitude of productions all over the world, the importance of lyric translation continues to increase. Lyric translation is a complex task that involves a deliberate balancing of multiple criteria such as singability, sense, naturalness, rhyme, and rhythm (Low, 2003). Despite such growing demand for song translations and the difficulties inherent in producing them, there has been little attention given to the translation of songs among translation researchers and musical producers alike. This negligence has ultimately led to a market that lacks a systematic framework for pricing translation services based on content difficulty and selecting qualified translators accordingly. In this study, a new tool is proposed to determine the level of difficulty involved in the translation of songs. The “SCRIP Index” is defined as the minimum number of syllables required for literal translation in the target language divided by the number of syllables in the source language. This study assessed the level of difficulty of translating the lines of four musical numbers using the Index. After assessing the level of difficulty of translating each line, this study also investigates the strategic choices made by translators to overcome difficulties by analyzing the translations produced by five professional translators and the actual translations used on stage.