Tangent, but they are the same thing, though it seems to be quite popular in the learner community to think they’re different. 他動詞 and 自動詞 are a pair of Meiji era coinages which, like most new words of that era, were coined to use in translations of Western books – in this case books about the grammar of Western languages that talked about transitive and intransitive verbs. (Obviously which particular concepts get transitive vs intransitive verbs doesn’t line up between languages. But calling Japanese verbs transitive or intransitive, or talking about English verbs in Japanese and calling them 他動詞 or 自動詞, is fine and not misapplying a grammar concept specific to one language to the other.)
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I’ll take your word for it.
Regardless, I still suggest not thinking about transitiveness (if that’s a word) of the English. Even if there is a direct map between the concepts themselves, as seen in this thread the natrual Japanese and English equivalent might not match.
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We have passed from language/grammar to philosophical/physics thought experiments now. Is the cat alive, dead, both or neither?
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If there’s a cat in a box in the forest, and someone rings a bell…
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暗黒の森で鳴らせば、もう死んでる。
(三体、黒暗森林の小説にはそれが書かれている）