NT can not run Linux binaries. That is why Microsoft are now shipping a full Linux kernel for WSL 2. WSL 1 translated Linux syscalls to NT in the same way that WINE does in the reverse.
To be honest, WSL translated Linux syscall to NT the same way that it translates Win32 calls to NT. NT has its own API and has a thing called "personalities" which they used to implement both OS/2 and Win32 binaries support, and recently Linux. So where WINE is an additional layer on top of Linux syscalls, WSL1 is on the same "level" as Win32.