Do we need different language translation for Mandarin and Cantonese chinese websites?
A. This is a common misunderstanding. There are many spoken dialects of chinese, Mandarin being the official language of mainland china, and Cantonese being the language of the Canton provinces including Hong Kong and Macau. Although these two dialects (and others) are very different, the written language for the different chinese dialects is essentially the same. There are however two different styles of writing chinese characters, called traditional (as used in Hong Kong) and simplified (as used in mainland China). Simplified characters have less strokes and are easier to write. In general a web-site translation written in either style is readable by all Chinese people – however those in the mainland will in general prefer simplified, and those in Hong Kong and Taiwan will prefer the traditional style. It is up to you to decide which translation you require, or if you require both.
