We investigate the early onset of pionic color transparency ({pi}CT) observed at Jefferson Laboratory (JLAB) in semi-exclusive pion electroproduction reaction A(e,e{sup '}{pi}{sup +}) off nuclei. In the present description the primary {gamma}*p{yields}{pi}{sup +}n interaction is described very well both for the longitudinal and the transverse polarizations. For the final state interactions a coupled-channel treatment of the interactions of transmitted hadrons allows to go beyond the Glauber approximation. We show that a proper distinction between the soft hadronic and hard partonic components of the electroproduction amplitude is essential for a quantitative description of the measured nuclear transparency. The data are well reproduced if one assumes that point-like configurations are produced in the regime of hard deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) off partons and dominate the transverse channel.