My article tries to answer the intricate question whether the translator of comics consciously takes on the role of cultural mediator. I chose Tintin’s 8th adventure, Le Sceptre d’Ottokar d’Hergé (1939) for the international fame of the series. I am comparing it with and contrasting it against its 2007 Romanian translation, supporting the idea that, besides linguistic competence and cultural knowledge, the translator of comics should also have artistic competence: visual sharpness plays upon dilemmas or resolves hesitations. I analyze the difficulties in socio-cultural transfer, the translation of proper names and the puns which require skill, finesse and creativity, but also the translation of linguistic markers of affection and of oral discourse (onomatopoeia and interjections), etc. I discover that the translator, Raluca Ursachi, resorts to equivalence and correspondence, or that she adapts or copies punctual solutions, but that the Romanian translation “sins” by some semantic loss and gap instances.