how do you handle "X-na pronoun no Y"?

[level up]

I know this must be really basic, but-
I'm confused about how to translate this pattern:

曖昧な私の思いが...
aimai na watashi no omoi ga...

素敵なきみのreality...
suteki na kimi no reality....


Do the -na adjectives in these examples really describe the personal pronoun (watashi, kimi) or the noun after it (omoi, reality)? I.e. are these lyrics:

my vague feelings...
your beautiful reality...

or something we can't really say gracefully in English, like:

the feelings of me, who is a vague person...
the reality that belongs to you, who are a beautiful person...

Thanks!

[Datenshi]

There's really no way to tell for sure by looking at the grammar. But most of the time you can obviously tell from common sense and the context, like in the first example you've given. 「曖昧な私」 doesn't make much sense, so it's clear that the only way to read the line is 「[私の]曖昧な思い」, or "my vague feelings".

The second example you've given is a lot trickier, since it makes at least a little sense both ways. However, when you compare "your beautiful reality" with "the reality that belongs to you, who are a beautiful person", you can at least make an educated guess that the former is what is meant, since it makes more sense than the latter.

Usually a comma is inserted to avoid confusion in prose (曖昧な、私の思いが／曖昧な私の、思いが...）, unless the line is left deliberately vague, as a kind of pun. Speaking from my personal experience, when there's nothing to designate how to read the line, as a rule of thumb it's safe to assume that the -na adjective describes the "pronoun" in most cases.

[level up]

There's really no way to tell for sure by looking at the grammar. But most of the time you can obviously tell from common sense and the context

Thanks. I never thought much about the issue, and just assumed, as you say, that the context would tell-- until I started noticing some stuff where, if I really thought about it, the obviously better answer contextually wasn't really possible in English. And then I guess I had an existential crisis, lol, and started wondering if certain choices only seem better because of how we're used to structuring our thoughts, which we do in our native speech. So if I had a different set of native speech, would a different choice just naturally seem better?

I suppose it doesn't really matter for song lyrics, since I wouldn't choose the linguistically awkward choice even if it was technically more accurate, since it should be enjoyable to read. But sometimes my brain just won't shut up, lol, and there's nothing to do but follow a thought through to as close to its conclusion as I can get, even if I might rather be spending my time in some more useful and/or enjoyable fashion.