In thsi paper, the author focuses on translatiojn criteria. The author does not try to define these criteria, but tries to explain how such criteria originate and how they function. Special attention goes to the Czech situation in this aspect. The author concludes that translation criticism has to verify continuously its criteria, has to complete or modify them depending on the important circumstances determined by the development of the society, its culture, literature and language, it has to respond to the development of the art of translation, it has to take into account its interious shifts, especially in the field of the translation method. That is why the author claims that translation criticism is a social phenomenon relecting individual relations to reality.