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In Genki 2nd edition chapter 11, the following translation is given:

> メアリーさんはチベットに **行きたい** と言っていました
>
> Mary said she **wanted** to go to Tibet

I would have thought that the translation should be that she **wants** to go
to Tibet. To say that she **wanted** to go to Tibet, I would think that the
sentence would be the following:

> メアリーさんはチベットに **行きたかった** と言っていました

Is this sentence not grammatical? What's the difference between the two? How
does one say that "she said wants to go", rather than "she said she wanted to
go"?
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grammar tense relative-tense
Wanted to go vs wants to go in Genki I
I'd say this is a case of ambiguity on the English side. Consider, you and I
both talked to Mary yesterday. You tell me, "Mary wants to go to Bali". I
might respond, "Oh, that's interesting, she told me she wanted to go to
Tibet."

In English, because we have two ways of reporting what someone says (direct
and indirect speech) there's ambiguity that enters in the tenses. (Japanese
doesn't have this distinction.) For English, depending on the context, both
"she said she wants to go" and "she said she wanted to go" could both mean the
same thing. (as in the scenario above). Nevertheless, without context, the
second one sounds like she may have changed her mind.

But in Japanese, if you wrote/said

> メアリーさんはチベットに行きたかったといっていました

then this sounds like, "Mary said she **had wanted** to go to Tibet." But
she's now subsequently changed her mind.

So, in Japanese, if you want to say "Mary said she wants to go to Japan", then
you would say

> メアリーさんはチベットに行きたいといっていました

Moral of the story, tense matters get very confused between English and
Japanese.
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answer
The quotation is what she literally said at the time of utterance (more or
less).

In English when quoting "without quotes" you shift the tense one step into the
past i.e. you say "She said she wanted to go.", but what she really said was
"I want to go." in Japanese you don't do this tense shift, it's (with regards
to tense) what she said word for word.

So in the first example she wanted to go at the time she said it,

and in the second example she wanted to go sometime before she said it (And
presumably doesn't want to go anymore.)

The only difference that I know of between Japanese indirect quotation
(without quotes) and Japanese direct quotation (with quotes) is that you can
drop the polite form in indirect quotation((”行きたいと言った。” vs “ ”行きたいです”と言った”))

Oh, and you can also switch pronouns around (i.e. if she said something to you
you can change her "あなた"(or other pronoun) to a "私"(or other pronoun).
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answer