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Transpile is a superset or compile just like typescript is a superset of JavaScript. Transpile implies translating but not into a less complex language but rather onto a similar runtime. So typescript is dynamic just like JavaScript, and they share much of their semantics. So transpile means compile but onto a similar runtime with similar runtime semantic behavior.

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In that case surely you'd agree that there are hardly any compilers in wide use these days - more often than not the first step of a modern compiler is translation into a similar but less expressive intermediate language.

Or does it only count as "transpilation" if the intermediate representation is an already existing language, thus making the distincion purely based on the history of a language, not the implementation?

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