Mandarin, Cantonese, and Written Chinese

A "Chinese version" is four independent decisions: Mandarin or Cantonese on the voice track, simplified or traditional on the type, which traditional standard if you pick traditional, and whether the written line is standard written Chinese or written Cantonese. Teams collapse those into one language dropdown, generate once, and ship the same file to Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong. Viewers in all three places can tell. Two of them will treat it as a foreign ad.

The catalog will not save you. Versely's voice table lists one language named Chinese. It is a dub target. Gemini's code for it is cmn-CN (Mandarin, PRC). ElevenLabs, Cartesia, Inworld, Qwen, and Grok all expose a single zh / ZH_CN / Chinese label. MiniMax does not cover Chinese at all. There is no Cantonese row, no yue-HK, and no traditional-versus-simplified switch on the speech tool. Whatever you need beyond "Mandarin, PRC-coded" has to live in the script, the type, and the review, not in the language picker.

Spoken: Mandarin versus Cantonese

Mandarin (Putonghua / Guoyu) is the broadcast standard on the mainland, in Taiwan, and in Singapore's Chinese-language media. Cantonese (Yue) is the spoken language of Hong Kong, Macau, and large parts of Guangdong, plus diaspora communities that still treat it as the home language. They are not accents of each other. A Mandarin speaker who does not know Cantonese cannot follow a Cantonese ad, and the reverse is also true.

What that means for a voice track:

Market	Spoken default	What a Mandarin track does
Mainland China	Mandarin	Expected
Taiwan	Mandarin (Taiwan pronunciation and vocabulary)	Expected, but a mainland accent and mainland word choices still read as mainland
Singapore, Malaysia (Chinese-language buy)	Mandarin, often mixed with English	Expected
Hong Kong, Macau	Cantonese	Reads as a mainland or Taiwan import. Fine for some brand films. Fatal for most paid social

A cloned English read dubbed into "Chinese" will come back as Mandarin. That is the correct output for a mainland or Taiwan buy and the wrong output for a Hong Kong buy. If the brief is Hong Kong paid social, you need a Cantonese performance: a Cantonese-capable talent, a Cantonese script, and a review by someone who speaks it. Writing and generating a voiceover from a Mandarin script, or running the Chinese dub target, will not invent Cantonese for you.

Taiwan Mandarin is still Mandarin. It is not Cantonese. It does differ from PRC Mandarin in pronunciation, in everyday vocabulary (影片 not 视频, 軟體 not 软件, 資訊 not 信息), and in particle use. A mainland Mandarin VO on a Taiwan cut is intelligible and still wrong in the way a Castilian VO is wrong on a Mexico buy: everyone understands it, and everyone files it as imported.

Written: simplified, traditional, and the two traditionals

Spoken choice does not decide the type. Written Chinese is a separate pair.

Simplified is the official script of the PRC and of Singapore. It is what mainland paid social, mainland packaging, and mainland in-app screens use.

Traditional is the official script of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. It is not one traditional. A Hong Kong cut and a Taiwan cut that both "use traditional" can still fail each other.

The split that actually ships:

Character variants. The same word is not always the same glyph. 裡 / 裏, 為 / 爲, 群 / 羣 are the textbook cases. Taiwan and Hong Kong publishers do not pick these at random; they follow different standard lists. A font or a generation that "does traditional" will mix them.
Vocabulary. Even in standard written Chinese, the words differ. Mainland 视频 / 软件 / 信息 versus Taiwan 影片 / 軟體 / 資訊 versus Hong Kong 影片 / 軟件 / 資訊 is a three-way split, and it shows up in the first line of a product ad.
Written Cantonese versus standard written Chinese. Hong Kong social and a lot of Hong Kong print ads write the way people speak: 嘅, 唔, 係, 哋, 喺. Taiwan ads do not. A Taiwan traditional line set in a Hong Kong feed reads as a Taiwan ad. A written-Cantonese line set in a Taiwan feed reads as broken Chinese to anyone who does not speak Cantonese.

Treat "traditional" as a market, not a script flag. The brief should say "Taiwan traditional, standard written Chinese" or "Hong Kong traditional, written Cantonese" the way it would say "Mexican Spanish" rather than "Spanish."

On-screen type is also a rendering problem. Models that are merely "good at text" invent plausible Chinese characters that are the wrong characters. That failure is documented separately in multilingual type for CJK and Arabic. The short version for this decision: do not bake the Chinese line into the generation unless you have a fluent reader checking the actual glyphs at full resolution. Seedream 5.0 Pro is catalogued at 7 credits with a multilingual_text capability; Qwen Image is 2 credits. Neither replaces the reader. The safer path for a paid placement is to generate the picture without the line, then overlay the type from a string you control.

Versely's caption font registry is 23 Latin-first faces. Do not assume Inter or Montserrat will shape CJK correctly in a burned-in pass. If the font file does not contain the glyph, you get tofu, a silent drop, or a fallback face that does not match the rest of the board.

When a Hong Kong cut is not a Taiwan cut

The two traditional markets share a script family and almost nothing else in a commercial. If you have budget for one extra version, do not spend it on a second mainland variant. Spend it on not shipping Taipei's file to Hong Kong.

A Hong Kong cut that is actually a Hong Kong cut:

Cantonese VO, not Mandarin.
Traditional characters to Hong Kong norms, not Taiwan's.
Written Cantonese on social and on hooks; standard written Chinese on legal lines, app UI, and anything that has to survive a mainland screenshot.
HKD, +852, MTR / taxi / 的士 vocabulary, English mixed in where Hong Kong ads actually mix English.
No mainland slang, no Taiwan slang, no simplified characters in the frame.

A Taiwan cut that is actually a Taiwan cut:

Mandarin VO with Taiwan vocabulary, not a mainland read with traditional captions.
Traditional characters to Taiwan norms.
Standard written Chinese, not written Cantonese.
TWD, +886, 捷運 not 地铁, 影片 not 视频.
No simplified characters in the frame, including on packaging the model invented in the background.

A mainland cut:

Mandarin VO.
Simplified characters only.
PRC vocabulary.
CNY / RMB, +86.
If the work will be distributed on a Chinese platform, explicit and implicit AI labels are a destination requirement. They are not a language decision, but they fail at the same publish step.

Dubbing a single master into "Chinese" and swapping the caption font between simplified and traditional does not produce those three files. Dubbing is an audio operation. Burned-in type, packaging in shot, wall signage, and the offer stay in the master's script and the master's market. Dub the master or regenerate in-language is the structural choice; for Chinese it is usually regenerate for Hong Kong, and dub mainland Mandarin to Taiwan only if a native reviewer rewrites the words the VO will actually say.

A four-line brief and a review that can fail the file

Put the four decisions on the first line of the brief, not in a comment on the cut:

Spoken: Mandarin (PRC / Taiwan / Singapore) or Cantonese.
Written script: simplified or traditional.
Traditional standard: Taiwan or Hong Kong. Ignore this line if the script is simplified.
Written register: standard written Chinese or written Cantonese.

Then review in this order, with a fluent reader for the target, not a Mandarin speaker "who can get the gist" of Cantonese:

Play the VO with the picture off. A mainland accent on a Taiwan buy, or Mandarin on a Hong Kong buy, is audible in the first sentence. You do not need the picture to hear it.
Read every on-screen string at full resolution. Headlines, captions, packaging, shop signs, phone screens in hand. Confirm script, variant, and vocabulary against the four-line brief. "Looks like Chinese" is the failure mode, not the pass.
Check the offer. Currency, phone prefix, app store, and unit size. A Mandarin VO over an HKD price with a +86 number is three markets in one frame.
Check the master's baked text. If you dubbed, the original language is still in the picture. That is a regenerate or an overlay job, not a second dub.

Chinese is one of 25 dub targets and sits on six of the seven speech engines. Coverage is not the problem. Naming is the problem. Until the brief names all four decisions, "Chinese" will keep producing a mainland Mandarin file with whatever characters the model felt like drawing.

FAQ

Can I use one traditional file for both Taiwan and Hong Kong?

Not for paid social. You can share a brand film that has no VO and no type. The moment there is speech or a headline, the files diverge: Cantonese versus Mandarin, written Cantonese versus standard written Chinese, and two traditional standards. Shipping Taipei's cut to Hong Kong is the most common "we localized" failure in this language pair.

Does picking Gemini's `cmn-CN` code lock me to mainland Mandarin?

It names Mandarin, PRC. It does not write your script, pick your characters, or prevent you from overlaying Taiwan traditional type on a Mandarin track. The code is a speech-engine hint, not a market. Taiwan still wants Mandarin; it wants different words and different type. Hong Kong does not want that code at all.

Should on-screen type match the VO dialect in Hong Kong?

On the hook and the selling line, yes: written Cantonese next to Cantonese speech. On legal copy, disclaimers, and in-app UI, standard written Chinese is still the safer register, including in Hong Kong. The broken version is a Cantonese VO under Taiwan-style standard written headlines, or a Mandarin VO under written Cantonese captions.

If I only have budget for two Chinese cuts, which two?

Mainland simplified Mandarin, and one traditional market you actually buy. If you buy Hong Kong, that second cut is Cantonese plus Hong Kong traditional. If you buy Taiwan, it is Taiwan Mandarin plus Taiwan traditional. A single "traditional" file trying to cover both is the cut that fails both.