This article presents a self-descriptive translation criticism of Jean-Marie Mathey’s book, Comprendre la Stratégieand its Turkish translation. Today, there is a need to understand and explain the reality of translation with all its possible components beyond description in translation criticism. When a translation is viewed from the translator’s point of view, translation goes far beyond being a mere practice and turns into a reflexion on the translation experience. As a witness of what is going on in this process, the translator looks at his/her translation from a first-hand, self-orientated, reflexive act. In Bourdieusian terms, reflexive gaze necessitates a critical approach to the object of research, scientific practice and knowledge. The projected self-descriptive translation criticism model in this article consists of two stages: a descriptive stage with macro and micro levels, and a self-descriptive stage. The descriptive stage utilizes a translation criticism model that we conceived based on José Lambert &Van Gorp's descriptive model, Van den Broeck’s systemic translation criticism model, and Turgay Kurultay’s translation criticism approach. During the macrostructural level of this stage, the target text was initially read to determine the general impression, identify the problems seen at first glance, and establish the questions to be addressed in the following stages. Then, the source text was perused to understand the text, make interpretations, and identify problems of meaning, taking into account the text type. At the microstructural level of the descriptive stage, the points identified at the macrostructural level were compared in the source and target texts, depending on the text type. In the self-descriptive stage, Ayşe Nihal Akbulut’s self-descriptive approach was employed. In this phase, the translator’s profile, experience, testimonies of the translation process, as well as visuals and notes of the process, were used to conduct a holistic evaluation of the macro and micro levels. In this experiment aimed at assessing whether the translation researcher can achieve objectivity in their critical view of their own translation, the proposed model facilitated a relational reading of the translation product and process. Different versions of the translation, translator testimonies, process minutes, and notes played a role in bringing the decisions to a partial level of consciousness. Adopting a holistic perspective of the translation product and process will contribute to questioning the limitations of objectivation in the practices of criticism and scholarship, as well as in the generation of “knowledge” regarding the past reality of translation practice.