Before you can translate the text, you should make sure, that all programs and data are present in the right directories and that the environment variables are set correctly. At least the variable TEXFORMATS should be set and as an entry contain the name of the directory TeX:formats In this directory, a file with the name plain.fmt should be present. If you rather want to use the German version of TEX (the macro package is called plaing.fmt), then you must substitute the plain by plaing in the next call.
The call for virtex looks like this:
virtex &plain testfile
After the input you should get the following output on the screen:
This is a PD-Version of Pas-TeX (made Jan 22 1991 [br]/[hes]) This is TeX, C Version 3.1 (testfile.tex [1] ) Output written on testfile.dvi (1 page, 672 bytes). Transcript written on testfile.log.
virtex has created an output file with the name testfile.dvi and a protocol file with the name testfile.log.