The past tense for the quoting particle って


I have this sentence in front of me

> 耳元で男の人の声がするのが耐えられないって

which is translated as:

> she said she couldn't stand hearing a male voice near her ear.

If I am right, here, って is actually translated as "said" which makes me
realise, I am only familiar with the present form of quoting particles と and
って. Taking into the account that 耐えられない is the present form of the verb, and
the translation is about something which happened in the past, I feel that I
am actually ignorant about the grammar of the quoting particle.

How do we know if the quoting is about something which is happening now (says)
or something which happened in the past (said), do we use the same quoting
particle for past and present? If so, how do we recognise the difference?




The quoting particle と (or って) is tenseless, just as the quotation marks `"`
for direct speech ( _she said "I want to sing"_ ), or `that` for indirect
speech ( _she said that she wanted to sing_ ) are tenseless.

The tense is reflected in the verb that is used with the quoting particle,
e.g.

  * ～といいました
  * ～といった
  * ～といっています

In your example sentence, the correct tense for translation into English has
to be determined from the context of the original sentence, as there is no
verb to read off the tense.




The quoting particle と (or って) is tenseless, just as the quotation marks `"`
for direct speech ( _she said "I want to sing"_ ), or `that` for indirect
speech ( _she said that she wanted to sing_ ) are tenseless.

The tense is reflected in the verb that is used with the quoting particle,
e.g.

  * ～といいました
  * ～といった
  * ～といっています

In your example sentence, the correct tense for translation into English has
to be determined from the context of the original sentence, as there is no
verb to read off the tense.

