Political cartoons are employed by the major Chinese news organisations to present critical viewpoints on global sociopolitical matters. This study draws on the theory of grammatical metaphor to investigate the grammatical demetaphorization observed in the translation of titles accompanying these cartoons. Both ideational and interpersonal demetaphorization are identified. Through a multimodal discourse analysis, it is found that these two types of demetaphorization interact with the cartoons’ verbal-visual elements and thereafter affect the semantic focus, political meaning construction and information arguability of the cartoons. This phenomenon of grammatical demetaphorization in translation reflects translators’ active role in political dissemination. Considering the sociopolitical context in China, the authors argue that translators’ activism is influenced by their institutional affiliations with the news organisations.