I'm reading the book "Roadside Picnic" which was originally written in Russian. In one part of the book, the translator writes:
Those egghead scientists were making progress. They've got the road hung all the way to the dump, and cleverly hung at that!
A newer translations reads:
These eggheads are making progress after all … Look, they’ve laid a route all the way to the dump, and a clever route at that!
Now, I understand that the scientists delimited the boundaries of the road, but why did the first translation read "hung the road"? I now know that "hang" means decorate, but it seems such an obscure meaning for the word, not to mention that it doesn't seem to truly make the point of what the scientists had actually done, which is delimitate the boundaries of the road, unless they did so by means of flags, balloons, etc., but then again it seems like a stretch given the context.
Why do you think the translator chose that word? I feel like I'm missing something here and I, of course, don't know what it is as I had never seen the word "hang" used in a context like this one.
If anyone cares, here's the original Russian version of the book:
Все-таки продвигаются ученые... Смотри, до самого отвала дорогу провесили, да как ловко провесили!