Well, there are two opposite ways of translation.
1. You translate something in a very detailed manner to keep as close as possible to the original wording. In the end you get an almost word-for-word translation. Sometimes, because of the different logics of the languages (and different ways of thinking of people to whom these languages are native) you can get awkward and heavy word constructions presented to the reader.

2. You translate something with more freedom of choice, more idiomatically, you just basically go along the original line of plot but you are free to move left or right to a certain extent. That is, when you encounter a stylistic trick or a fancy word that has no literal translation into the target language, you are free to replace it with SOMETHING that exerts the SAME EFFECT on the reader and conveys the EQUAL MEANING but in words that either can be or not the translations or equivalents of the original ones.

What I am trying to say is that translation is always a choice. It's always a decision between Model 1 and Model 2 and which one you choose in every case depends on an infinity of factors that may influence your point of view.

It's like a question whether I can translate a "палка с острым концом" as "a sharp-ended stick" or I should incline towards "a stick with a sharp end" because there's the "остроконечный" for "sharp-ended" in Russian. What about "scull-ended" (с навершием в форме черепа) or completely untranslatable things like "mind-blowing", "challenge", etc. When you have become accustomed to translating such things you start projecting this way of thinking on simpler phrases, abiding more by the Model #2-thing than to the first one.

P.S. That was funny to hear the "what the author was trying to say" because it's the author who actually did say that. And there are we, who are trying to convey the same by means of the other language. I got your point though, and I agree on "as .. as". I somehow missed this aspect (cross-relationship) of this pattern.

Not sure if 'embordering' is a word
Well, dictionaries sometimes contain tons of random junk. I thought this word was more fancy to the reader with the idea of 'embracing+bordering=embordering' in mind