In my limited understanding, static recompiling is like JIT transpilation from one arch to another where emulation runs each instruction calling behaviour depending on the instruction. As for tradeoffs my knowledge is not wide enough to declare anything certain.
Emulation visits instructions as they are executed. Static recompilation will (at translation time) visit instructions that can be discovered, even if they never run.
eg:
if (rand64() == 0x123456789abcdef0ull)
baz = bar;
an emulator will likely never visit that assignment. A static recompiler will translate it.
eg:
an emulator will likely never visit that assignment. A static recompiler will translate it.Anyway, qemu certainly seems like it would fall under your definition of "emulator" despite obviously dynamically recompiling.
distinction is that an emulator is much simpler, while a static recompiler is a lot more work and thus ~30% more cool