One of just three surviving copies of the Sanctos no gosagueô—essentially a collection of hagiographies published by the Jesuit mission press in Japan in 1591—is currently held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. A comparison of this copy with the other two provides new insights not only into the mission press’ publishing activities and processes, but also into the book’s former owner Louis Picques, a late seventeenth-century Parisian orientalist. Picques’ handwritten notes show how he tried to understand the Japanese language empirically, relying on the little information that had reached Europe by that time. He investigated possible relationships between Japanese and some Eastern languages, considering whether they might share a common ancestor. This chapter discusses translatio in two senses: the translocation of the Sanctos from Japan to the sphere of European Oriental studies, and the translation of the Japanese language within academic circles in Europe at that time.