a better description would be translation is an attempt to capture the meaning of the original word in the new language, using terms already familiar in the new language.
a transliteration is an attempt to capture the sounds of the original word in a new language, with the expectation that after an initial period of familiarization, the speaker of the new language will begin to map the sound, which previously had no meaning in the new language, to the actual meaning of the original word.
The reasons why science often favor transliteration of terms over translation are:
1. scientists tend to ge smart and usually have less trouble than the general public in learning new words
2. transliteration between languages with broadly similar repertoire of sounds expressable in writing makes it easier for scientists from these languages to establish spoken scientific communication.
However, I think with chinese, the second reason is not very strong. the fact is it is chinese script is not phonetic so it is difficult to capture sounds from other language in chinese in a manner that remains intelligible to the speaker of original language. So using chinese transliteration for foreign scientific and technical terms does not really help spoken communication.
So when porting foreign technical terms into chinese, one might as well creat terms that mean something in chinese rather than sound vaguely, but not convincingly, like the original term.