Can you help me to translate this speech? 自分を理解してくれる者がいるというのは 心地よいものだよ


I'm trying to translate this text from a comic. I understood words, but the
whole speech is difficult.

自分を理解してくれる者がいるというのは 心地よいものだよ。。。 一人というのは寂しかっただろう？ 私もかつては自分を理解する者がいない 孤独に苛まれたよ。

I translated something like:

It's beautiful to have someone who understand you(rself). A lone person is a
solitary, do you agree? Once I didn't understand my self too and was tormented
by loneliness. (Or tormented myself into loneliness).

First phrase with that "者" and "というのは" was really a problem @.@




自分を理解してくれる者がいる is an idea ("There is someone who understands you"). 者 just
means "person(s)" and even though it is rarely used in real life these days,
let us leave it as is since OP says this is a line from a comic.

In order to use an idea as a topic in Japanese, we need to nominalize it. The
easiest way to do so INFORMALLY is to add a の, which is done here. Since we
now have a "virtual noun", we can add the topic-marker は. The author could
have said:

自分を理解してくれる者がいるのは～～ but he wanted to make it sound more formal and emphatic, so
he used という and said:

自分を理解してくれる者がいるというのは～～ In essence, he expressed the formality and emphasis that
he desired by "quoting" the idea --- by treating it as a written saying from
somewhere.

One sees the same process in the phrase 一人というのは. One may wonder how 一人 could
be an idea but here it is the same as 一人でいる or 理解してくれる人がいない.

OP was not successful in reading the structure of the last sentence. It does
not say "I did not understand myself." Rather it says, "I used to be 苛まれた by
the 孤独 that came from the fact that 自分を理解する者がいない."

"That there is someone who understands you is a pleasant thing. Being alone
must have felt lonely, I presume? I, too, used to be tormented by the
solitariness of not having anyone to understand me."

