The missionary task of the Spanish friars in the Philippine Island was, during more than three centuries, an applied work from a double point of view. First, because the mastering in these grammatical and lexical aspects of the languages was the sine qua non condition to spread the Word of God among the Philippine speakers. Secondly, because it had an empirical and contrastive side: its main aim was to become the friars able to communicate and to be understood by the people. The Artes and Vocabularios are, at the same time, a European exogrammatization and a product of translation between very different languages (from a typological view). However, we must wait until the end of the XX century to read some investigations on this applied task. It is an interesting topic both for the history of Hispanic and European translation and for the history of linguistic ideas.