can a compiler be made as a chain of sub-compilers?

gistfile1.txt

It is known that functional programming and -at the extreme- lambda-calculus is fundamentally equivalent to more conventional programming, involving sequential execution of statements and variable affectation.

For instance a code like:

    my $x = foo();
    bar($x);
    fiz($x);
    
can be written:

    sub ($x) { sub { fiz($x) }(bar($x)) }(foo());

which is very close to whatever would be its equivalent in lambda-calculus.

That got me wondering:  would it be possible to create a compiler for a high-level programming language like Perl, from a series of trans-compilers for a chain of sub-languages.  That is, starting from a very lisp-like language, making a compiler that would take a slightly more complicated language that would target the lisp-like one, and then an other compiler targetting that second language, and so on and so on?

Perl 6 currently uses a sub-language for its definition:  NQP.  Could it be feasible and desirable to increase the number of sublanguages and create a hierarchy of them that would start from a very lisp-like one?