Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Within a fairly wide range, though, such differences can be avoided in an encyclopedia. It depends on how extreme the differences might be, of course, but mutual intelligibility is the standard that I would use.
At a textual level mutual intelligibility becomes less of an issue once mutual readability (by way of a Traditional/Simplified converter) is in place. What's left is mostly mutual learning and acceptability at a community level. Will PRC users accept that a computer is known as an "electronic brain" in Taiwanese Mandarin, and not as a "calculator"? Will a Taiwanese Mandarin (or Japanese) user accept that what looks like the term for "calculator" often refers to a "computer" in PRC Mandarin? Clearly such differences can not always be avoided, and one or another or both have to be used without affecting intelligibility for one of the user groups. The evolution toward mutual textual intelligibility (through learning) and mutual acceptability (through tolerance and/or compromise) might *eventually* contribute to some kind of International Mandarin. Probably there are already transnational business incentives to do so.
But what Google appears to do now is accomodate the reality of (somewhat) diverged standards. E.g. looking up "電腦" ("electronic brain"/computer) one also gets results referring to "计算机" ("calculator"/computer). More remarkably, Google is able to present excerpts from Simplified pages in Traditional text, with 计算机 replaced by 電腦.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=%E9%9B%BB%E8%8...