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/0411/2002 Archived Entry: "Countdown Pt.2"

If you saw the comment made by 'anonymous' (embarrassed@countdown.com) to my previous missive on the subject of British tv shows, then you will have become aware that Countdown is actually a French invention. I think that what made it uniquely British is the addition of Richard Whiteley and - occasionally - Richard Stilgoe. However, I looked at the link that Anon gave me. It's in French. I can just about read it and, as far as I could tell gave no hint that it was actually originally French. It just seemed to be an online version of Countdown, with the only actual reference to the show being that it was a game of numbers and letters "suit le fonctionnement du célèbre jeu télévisé". Anyway, I thought I'd run it througha translation programme. Not for any accuracy, just because they are usually a giggle. So, I did the Google one and it came up with this:

"Figures and letters I - the figures and the letters This play of the figures and the letters follows the operation of the famous television game. Two players clash in six tests: four of letters and two of figures. The winner will be that which will have accumulated the most points. A history file will safeguard possibly the results of the part. II - Environment... The figures and the letters were written for a Unix waiter in a Pascal. They function only in text mode. For those which have a graphic environment, it will thus not be very interesting but for the others (student at the university for example), celà contributes to spend time. III - Extracts III - Description of the files the file jeu.tar.gz is to be downloaded. One will need then the décompresser then the désarchiver. That will be done in the following way: user@servor > gunzip jeu.tar.gz user@servor > tar xvf jeu.tar You will obtain after these operations the following files: jeu.exe: the achievable one. Not inevitably compatible with your system. jeu.p: the source code. Will allow to generate with your Pascal compiler another achievable. lettres.txt: file used by the play. chiffres.txt: fichire used by the play."

I like the idea of a Unix Waiter. Well, I suppose waiters do wear penguin suits... And I imagine this would apply to those in "a Pascal" as well. I then had a look at Babelfish and discovered that it wasn't what I thought it was... The small print says that they are "not affiliated with AltaVista Babel Fish machine translation services." Which makes me wonder if either one would have some sort of case for infringement of copyright. Although how either one could copyright the name (which Babelfish.com appears to have done...) when it's a Douglas Adams invention (Which, again, Babelfish.com doesn't seem to acknowledge in anyway whatsoever) I don't know.
Anyway, the AltaVista Babelfish translation seems to be essentially the same as the Google one, but actually translates the page rather than having to paste the text into a box, so the translation actually looks like the page rather than just a block of text. Exciting stuff, eh?