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Given the following English:

> "A woman's torso, its skin a deathly purple, sat atop an immense arachnid
> thorax."

It's possible to rearrange the prepositional phrases and still have a
grammatically correct English sentence. For example:

> "Its skin a deathly purple, a woman's torso sat atop an immense arachnid
> thorax."

Is perfectly fine, likewise:

> "A woman's torso sat atop an immense arachnid thorax, its skin a deathly
> purple."

Is also correct (though in this case it might become a little unclear if the
spider thorax is purple or the woman's torso, or the monster as a whole).

From a literary standpoint, this could easily be used if, for example, the
author wanted to draw the reader's attention to different parts of the
creature at different times, or, in this case, to create the sense that the
viewer of the creature is noticing different features in a certain order.

For my example, it's the latter, with some added context:

> "The hulking shadow finally came into sharp focus.  
>  A woman's torso, its skin a deathly purple, sat atop an immense arachnid
> thorax."

In this case, the passage gives the impression that as the creature moves from
the shadows into the light, the first thing noticed is a woman's torso, then
the torso's color, then the fact that the torso is a part of a much larger
creature with a spider body.

In translating this into Japanese, is it possible to preserve this literary
stylization?

At first, one might think to write something like:

> 「死人のような真っ青な肌の女性の胴体が莫大なクモの体と結合された。」

But the problem with this is that it changes the order in which the creature's
features become visible (first evoking the image of color, then the image of
the woman's torso, then the monster body, rather than the woman's torso, then
its color, then the monster body). So then, like in English, is it possible in
Japanese to reorder the prepositional phrase "...[its/with] skin a deathly
purple..." so that it comes in the middle of the sentence, perhaps something
like:

> 「女性の胴体が、死人のような真っ青な肌で、莫大なクモ体と結合された。」

But, at least to me, this seems to give the impression that the color is the
agent by which the female torso and spider body are joined, which is certainly
not the intent of the passage. Perhaps the problem is the use of the particle
で?

As an aside, I'm sure that the intent of the English could be preserved by
breaking it up into multiple Japanese sentences, but the concern there is it
could add too much "baggage" to the passage, possibly making it become purple
prose.
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question
translation english-to-japanese word-order
Is it possible to preserve the literary style of this English passage in Japanese by rearranging the prepositional phrases?
In the usual sense, no. There isn't any way qualifying a phrase from behind in
the Japanese grammar. I remember I've answered a similar question long ago
([Rendering an appositive “which” clause in
Japanese](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/20851/7810)). Workarounds
exist, though there wouldn't be finite ways to cover all cases.

> 女性の上半身、死体のように赤黒い肌をしたそれが、巨大なクモの胴の上に鎮座している。

It separates the first noun phrase from the sentence and links to it again
using それ. This is more or less faithful to the original flow, but carries a
hint of translationese.

> 女性の上半身が、死体のように赤黒い肌をして、巨大なクモの胴の上に鎮座している。

In _this particular case_ , it works. Though it is grammatically tricky (being
a dirty type of [zeugma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma_and_syllepsis)),
it fully conveys the meaning of your English. Your ～肌で however does not work,
because it'd mean something weird here: "by a method being a skin --".

> 女性の上半身だ。（それは）死体のような赤黒い肌で、巨大なクモの胴の上に鎮座している。

The safest way is to break up the sentence, like this example. それは within
parentheses is usually not written, but for your reference and grammatical
clarification.

* * *

**PS**

If you really care about literary effect of word order, be noted that well-
tuned English ↔ Japanese translation often involves radical rearrangement with
little regard for grammatical correspondence. For example, see [the comparison
between Japanese and English manuals of the video game Crazy
Taxi](http://chigai.pico2culture.jp/article/178513778.html). Most notably IMO:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ondah.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ondah.jpg)
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answer