TEPA is a term bank compiled and maintained by the Finnish Terminology Centre TSK. TEPA contains special language terms and corresponding definitions presented in the form of multilingual terminological entries. The core of TEPA is formed by the Terminology Centre's own publications, but TEPA also contains field-specific glossaries, dictionaries and terminological databases compiled by other expert organisations.
The Terminology Centre has been using TEPA since 1984. In the beginning, TEPA was for the Terminology Centre's in-house use only, but after a few years, it was made available to paying clients. From 1997 on, TEPA has been accessible to all on a free-of-charge basis on the Terminology Centre's web page. In the course of years, TEPA has been renewed both in terms of its underlying technology and content.
TEPA has been realised by means of the dictionary program MOT® developed by the Finnish language technology company Kielikone Ltd. Currently, the TEPA Term Bank has more than 355 000 term entries. TEPA contains terms in fourteen languages, the most common of which are Finnish, Swedish, English and German.
The terminological resources contained by TEPA have been arranged into search categories based on their type or source. Examples of these categories are terminological glossaries, Bank of Finnish Terminology in Arts and Sciences, European Union’s term base IATE, Electropedia, and other glossaries. Each of these categories can be searched separately. By default, a TEPA search is applied to all of these categories, but it is possible to limit the search to specific categories only by selecting one or more categories.
The Finnish Terminology Centre TSK receives financial assistance from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture to maintain TEPA and to keep its usage free of charge. The TEPA Term Bank (collection of glossaries and specialised dictionaries) is available on the Terminology Centre's web site.