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Comment by dmitrygr | Hacker News Reader

That is actually what compilation means.

I suppose "compilation" usually refers to translating source code (as in human-readable) to some kind of byte code (as in machine-readable).

Here, we start with Java byte code which isn't exactly human-readable, hence the use of the term "transpile". But then again, you're right that on some abstract level, it all is just a translation process from one representation to another.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

They're both bytecodes though? I don't see how that is compilation.

Compiling is independent of source and target language, although it is mostly used to describe transformation from a higher-level human friendly language into a lower-level machine friendly language. Even so, the defined meaning of compiling is independent of the source and target languages. If you want to use the word "transpiling", you would have to define it in terms of compiling; transpiling is a special case of compiling, where the source and target languages have such and such properties.

It's really just semantics, but Merriam Webster defines a compiler as "A computer program that translates an entire set of instructions written in a higher-level symbolic language (such as C) into machine language before the instructions can be executed"

A dictionary really isn't a great source for the exact definitions of technical words. Wikipedia does much better in this instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler

> A compiler is computer software that transforms computer code written in one programming language (the source language) into another programming language (the target language).

Later on it lists some classes of compilers that could be called by more specific names than just "compiler".

That would be recursive:

"Compilation means taking one type of compiled code and translating it into another type of compiled code."

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