While as you point out there's not necessarily an academic difference, the notion that your target language will itself require a compiler and/or runtime is useful to know up front. Transpilers also usually attempt close to 1-to-1 translation. Functions become functions, constants become constants, etc.
As someone who has written many compilers before, I'd almost feel it would be a slight disservice to call a transpiler a compiler, mostly because their architecture and goals are often different.
As someone who has written many compilers before, I'd almost feel it would be a slight disservice to call a transpiler a compiler, mostly because their architecture and goals are often different.