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Essay

Translation as moat

Turning Russian, Kazakh and Uzbek ecosystem news into polished English narrative is the one advantage that compounds.

Kevin Editorial Desk
18 June 2026 · 6 min read
in
Translation as moat
Photograph: Kevin Films.

If the case for English-language coverage of the corridor is so obvious, the question is why nobody has done it well. The answer is mechanical, not philosophical: the people who could do it are doing more obviously lucrative things, and the people who try usually mistake translation for editorial.

"Translation is the floor. Editorial is the moat."

Translation is the floor. Editorial is the moat. The work is not converting Russian into English — it is converting a regional story into a global one, and that requires editorial judgement that is acquired only by reporting at scale.

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