そして、先に来た者から十二番目までを、その年の大将としよう

Question

そして、先に来た者から十二番目までを、その年の大将としよう。

It comes from a fable about the Chinese Zodiac that I'm trying to translate into English. I have this basic word-by-word translation:

• そして - and, used to connect sentences
• 先{さき} - first
• 来{き}た - past tense form of 来る, come
• 者{もの} - person
• から - from
• 十二番目{じゅうにばんめ} - twelfth
• まで - only
• その - that
• 年{とし} - year
• 代将{だいしょう} - leader(?)
• しよう - ?

a) I would translate しよう at the end of the sentence

b) How is this sentence structured? I understand the basic meaning only because I can put the seeming mess of words together, but I don't really understand how they fit together the way they do and why. Does 先に来た者から十二番目 just mean "first through twelfth", and what would be the correct translation of 者 in that case, person? But why does it come after 来た?

Answer 1

I'd rather not do a strict analogous translation, but let's try to break your sentence down into sensible segments:

そして、Thus

先に来た者から from he/that came first

十二番目（の者）までを、 until the twelfth (person/being),

「その年の大将」と as "the head/representative of that respective year"

しよう。 let's (make/designate)

To answer your question:

1) しよう is the volitional form of "to do". From the context of the sentence it would mean "Let's do (something)".

2) To reorganize my attempt at the sentence breakdown, it would roughly come as

Thus, let us designate those who/which came, first down to the twelfth, as the representative of each (of the twelve) year(s).