Help translating 皆には私の方から話しておこう


> 皆には私の方から話し **ておこう** 。

Can anyone help me translate the above sentence? The ておこう is throwing me off
as I'm unsure how it fits. From my understanding it's something like "Everyone
should practice my advice?" The context is a girl asking a boy for advice on
what she should do to make someone like her. The previous sentence was:

> そう、プレゼントだ。彼が気に入るものを贈るとポイントが高いぞ！

Which I'm roughly understanding as "That's right, a present. You should give
him something he likes."




Well first, it should be 話して and not 話て because the dictionary form is 話す.

Now, onto this form : 話しておこう comes from the more general pattern, 「Vておきます」.
You may recognize that おこう is the volitional, non-polite, form (let's do) of
おきます. If you know おきましょう, it is the same but less polite.

This pattern boils down to : do things in advance in order to realize a goal.
(In Japanese :
「ある目的のためにあらかじめある行為を行なう」[source](http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/mt/ja/gmod/contents/explanation/088.html)).

Some examples from the same website :

  * 来週までにレポートを書いておきます。(Please prepare in writing the report by next week)
  * 発表のために資料をコピーしておきました。(Please prepare copies of the documents for the announcement)
  * 友だちが来るので、部屋をきれいにしておきます。(As your friends are coming over, please tidy up your room beforehand)

So, in your sentence, I would go with something the lines of :

> Everybody, let's practice the talk from my point of view.

I am lacking the context so it is difficult to check, please help us out by
providing more insight !

