Abstract: Methods and associated services for consumer-oriented protections concerning communications between consumers and debt collectors are provided. In some embodiments, the service maintains debt collector profiles, which characterize known and suspected debt collectors. The debt collector profiles can include email addresses, telephone numbers, and other communication identifiers used by the debt collectors. When the service detects an incoming communication received at a user device associated with a consumer, it determines based on the debt collector profiles whether the communication is from a debt collector. If the communication is from a debt collector, the service can monitor the communication for compliance with one or more regulatory rules and/or communication preferences (of the consumer, the consumers employer, etc.). If the service detects a violation of the rules and/or preferences, the service can notify the consumer of the violation and perform additional actions.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for automatic translation of patent documents are provided. Translation knowledge customized for the patent domain is extracted and used. The method includes the steps of: extracting a number of technical terms from a patent document and assigning translated terms for the extracted technical terms; extracting expressions frequently used in patent documents, not in a document in a general domain, and constructing translated expressions; using the translation knowledge constructed in this way, applying a sentence pattern to extraordinarily long sentences in a patent document, dividing the sentence by recognition of parallel structure and syntax clues; and extracting translation units available for parsing and performing structure analysis.

Abstract: Disclosed are a hybrid automatic translation method and apparatus employing a combination of a rule-based method and a translation pattern method, and a computer readable medium thereof, which is capable of solving an ambiguity problem of the conventional rule-based method and a pattern generation and coverage problem of the translation pattern method.