Abstract: Tenor of discourse is about the participants of verbal communication. This paper explores tenor of discourse in translation,including its classification and attributes. The paper proposes that tenor of discourse in translation falls into two categories: macro tenor of discourse and micro tenor of discourse. The former can be divided into overt tenor of discourse and covert tenor of discourse. From different perspectives,the latter can be categorized into tenor of double participants and tenor of multiparticipants,and tenor with embedding and tenor without embedding. Tenor with embedding can be further classified into embedding tenor and embedded tenor. In addition,the paper argues that compared with inter-subjectivity of translation,tenor of discourse has three attributes: dependency on discourse,correspondence of participants and reality of participants' relationship.