One of the problems of Kazakhstani literature is fragmentation. Kazakh-language literature exists separately from Russian-language literature. And from this another problem follows — the absence of institutionalized translation practice. The Russian-speaking reader, as well as the Russian-speaking author, has no opportunity to get to know the works of Kazakh-speaking authors, namely modern ones. Whereas the classics have been translated during Soviet times, translation is a huge failure in the modern literary process. Everything that is out there is thanks to the sheer enthusiasm of the writers and poets who engage in translations only within the framework of seminars or simply do it for themselves. There is no such formulated objective — to translate the modern authors writing in Russian into Kazakh and vice versa, on any significant scale. 

Some authors attempt to fill this gap by publishing books in two languages. Last year a bilingual children's book by Kazakhstani authors Elena Klepikova and Ksenia Zemskova, "Quarantine People", was published. However, this is a very labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly process. While children's literature justifies this approach in terms of audience coverage and distribution, this is unlikely to be the case, for example, with poetry. 

However, some Kazakhstani Russian-speaking poets have found their way co-habitation with the Kazakh language. They use bilingualism as an element to emphasize their Kazakh-ness. While the implementation of bilingualism in literary writing itself is far from a new trope, it is the use of Kazakh words or whole phrases that indicate a kind of symbiosis between the two linguistic cultures. It is difficult to say whether Kazakh-speaking authors use the same technique, given the aforementioned fragmentation of Kazakhstani literature.

Another problem is the lack of a unified platform where Kazakh-speaking and Russian-speaking authors would get to know each other. There is the literary magazine Prostor in Kazakhstan, which publishes only authors who write in Russian. And there is the online literary magazine Daktil, which, due to the lack of the translation institution and thus the lack of support from such an institution, has no opportunity – much as one would like to – to publish works in the Kazakh language.

The fragmentation is also in the fact that the Kazakh literary process is focused mainly in Almaty, partly in the capital, and in Shymkent, but it is local, not unified to the point where it could be discussed as a whole. And there is yet no possibility of uniting writers and poets from all over Kazakhstan. Although it would certainly be an advantage for Kazakhstani literature to be able to bring the two linguistic cultures together and progress in the same direction, on the same level, complementing each other.