Abstract: In this thesis, we have conducted a contrastive discourse analysis of the processes of transitivity and themes between the four English versions of Moonlight Over the Lotus Pond, which are translated by Zhu Chunshen, Yang Xianyi, Wang Jiaosheng and Li Ming, and the original text by Zhu Ziqing,a famous Chinese essayist, from the perspective of experiential metafunctions and textual experiential metafunctions based on the framework of systemic functional linguistics. We have tried to find out which edition of the four English versions is the best one with the statistical data, which provides readers with a more objective perspective and makes up for the defects of subjectivity and arbitrariness of the previous contrastive discourse analysis on the different translation versions, in which the analysts just pick out a few sentences from different English translation versions casually and randomly to analyze and then draw a conclusion that which one is the best.

Key words: systemic functional linguistics, Moonlight Over the Lotus Pond, four English versions, discourse analysis