"a2p" program translates awk programs to perl programs. Tried it, immediately bumped into a different interpretation of "$0":
echo A B C D E | awk '{ $3="x"; print $0; }'
A B x D E
echo A B C D E | perl -e "$(echo '{ $3="x"; print $0; }' | a2p)"
A B C D E
upd:
patches and more bugs