as if he were always translating

Marx suggests an altenate model: money is not like language but like translated language. 'Ideas which have first to be translated out of their mother tongue into a foreign [fremde] language in order to circulate, in order to become exchangeable, offer a somewhat better analogy. So the analogy lies not in language but in the foreign quality or strangeness [Fremdheit] of language.'

Marx 1973, 80