> 1) ごはんを食べて、ねました。  
>  2) あさおきて、新聞を読みました。

I was wondering, if the part [食べて] and [おきて] are also past tense, because of
[~ました]. So the correct translation would be [I went to bed, after I ate.] or
is it [I went to bed, after eating.]?

Somehow I can't find similar question to this. Anyway, thank you very much in
advance.
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grammar
Grammar: te + verb + shimashita
The -te construction is used here to describe one event happening after
another. More exact translations might be "I ate dinner, then went to bed" or
"I woke up, then read the paper."

If you wanted to write "I went to bed after I ate", you might use "食べた後で寝ました"
or similar.
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Technically speaking, the ～て verbs are not in a "tense": the て ending is a
conjunctive or connective form, basically meaning that the action of the verb
happens, and then the next thing happens. The て ending itself suggests that
the action of the verb **completes** (technically a kind of [grammatical
aspect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect)), but it doesn't
tell us anything about **when** the action takes place (what
[tense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense) tells us) -- it could
be in the past, right now, or in the future.

Read through the Wikipedia links above, those will help you get a better
handle on aspect and tense. Then, if you still have questions, please either
update your question here, or post a new question.
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answer