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Taking the sentence below:

食糧として狩る者たちが存在する…

The first part (食料として), I take to mean "as a food source".

The second part (狩る者たち), I take to mean "hunters".

Tying that together with the が, it looks like "Hunters __ as a food source...

The last part (存在する), I believe is "exist(s)".

It looks like the sentence says "Hunters exist as a food source..." However, this doesn't make sense in context. Does anyone know where (or if) I'm messing up on my grammar?

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"Hunters exist as a food source."

This translation clearly makes no sense and needless to say, it is not what the original means, either. Basically, you are making at least two mistakes here.

「[食糧]{しょくりょう}として[狩]{か}る[者]{もの}たちが[存在]{そんざい}する。」

  1. You are not "seeing" the unmentioned direct object for the verb 「[狩]{か}る」 = "to hunt". In Japanese, it is the reader/listener's job to, from the context, "fill in the blanks" created by the writer/speaker. You must learn to "see" them.

  2. You translated 「狩る者たち」 into "hunters". That cost you in the end, did it not? That is "translating too much". It means "those who hunt".

That said, the biggest mistake you made is not giving us the context if I may get down to business here. How do we know what kind of translation fits the context?

I am imagining the context to be like there are those who hunt animals for pleasure and those who hunt for food -- that kinda stuff. Thus, my TL attempt would be something like:

"There exist those who hunt (animals) for food."

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  • Thanks for the insight. I was thinking 者 as in しゃ instead of もの. "Someone doing (to hunt) work".
    – AaronF
    Jun 5, 2015 at 23:26

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