It comes from a Russian folk tale in which a lazy fool called Yemelya catches a talking pike. In return for its life, the fish makes Yemelya's chores magically do themselves.

You needn't worry; the human face (yes, that one there) behind The Magic Pike is me, Alistair Gainey. I have a BA in History and Russian from the University of Sheffield (see the certificate here) and an MA in Applied Translation Studies from the University of Leeds (see the certificate here).

Between doing the BA and MA, I spent four years as a full-time Russian-English translator with the Aga Khan Humanities Project (an NGO working in education in Central Asia; read more about it here), translating an average of around 10,000 words a week -a total of around 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 (see a reference here).

Since October 2005, I've been working in Moscow as a full-time Russian-English translator with Reasoning Mind (a non-profit organization working in mathematics education in the United States; read more about it here).