The grammar of ~たい と焦がれながら


The character was describing her life, and has finished the previous sentence
with a full stop. She then said・・・・・・なんてことない日々を変えたい、と焦がれながら. It's translated
as "Hoping that some day something interesting would happen."

I am completely lost in the grammar of this sentence. I tried to read it as
follows:

Xと焦がれながら = while longing for X.

But X is なんてことない日々を変えたい. So it's like saying "I was longing for me wanting
to..." which clearly is wrong.

In addition, she's using a transitive verb 変えたい. Is she basically saying that
she wanted to change the ordinary days, in the sense that she wanted to make
something interesting happen?

And why 日々を変えたい rather than 日々が変えたい? Is it just conversational style?




It can be parsed as follows:

  * The first part, なんてことない日々を変えたい, is what she is thinking to herself. Like saying to yourself "I want to change up this dull lifestyle".
  * と the quotative particle indicating that what came previously is the content of the following verb. This と is often followed by verbs like 'think', 'say', 'feel' etc, which explain what is being done with the quoted phrase.
  * 焦がれながら the verb 焦がれる (to yearn for) + ながら (while, during). This means 'while yearning'.

Putting it together, she is yearning while thinking to herself "I'd like to
change this uninteresting lifestyle". Translations often take some liberty to
avoid prosaic literal renderings, so the translation you mention is
reasonable, in my opinion.




It can be parsed as follows:

  * The first part, なんてことない日々を変えたい, is what she is thinking to herself. Like saying to yourself "I want to change up this dull lifestyle".
  * と the quotative particle indicating that what came previously is the content of the following verb. This と is often followed by verbs like 'think', 'say', 'feel' etc, which explain what is being done with the quoted phrase.
  * 焦がれながら the verb 焦がれる (to yearn for) + ながら (while, during). This means 'while yearning'.

Putting it together, she is yearning while thinking to herself "I'd like to
change this uninteresting lifestyle". Translations often take some liberty to
avoid prosaic literal renderings, so the translation you mention is
reasonable, in my opinion.

