The article deals with the question of the categorisation of translations from Middle Low German into Modern High German as intralingual vs. interlingual translation. This paper sits at the interface between Linguistics and Translation Studies. Despite a few studies on translations from Middle High German and Middle Low German and an over a century long translation practice from these language stages, the translation from historical language stages of German and closely related languages has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. With this intention, the article first examines the theoretical foundations of translation. Then it discusses the concepts and types of equivalence between the source and target texts. It focusses on the similarities and differences between the translation types according to Roman Jakobson (intralingual, interlingual, intersemiotic translation). Finally, it addresses the problem of assigning translations from Middle Low German into Modern High German to a specific type of translation. To tackle the research question, linguistic and Translation Studies criteria are used, as well as illustrative examples from the Rostock animal epic “Reynke Vosz de olde” (Ludwig Dietz, 1539), which has not yet been fully edited and translated. Furthermore, it is shown that an intensive examination of the historical language stages of German from the perspective of Translation Studies at the interface with Historical and Comparative Linguistics is not only worthwhile in an exemplary form, but also raises completely new questions and calls into question assumptions the accepted discourse around the intralingual vs. interlingual translation topic has.