They're different concepts. Mandarin Chinese is a language. Cantonese, Hokkien and Classical Chinese are three other Chinese languages. All of these can be written in Chinese characters. There are two different versions of Chinese characters however: simplified and traditional. It's sort of like how some languages can be written in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts, although they're not nearly that different. Simplified Chinese characters were introduced by the People's Republic of China. They're based off Traditional Chinese characters, but many complex characters have been simplified. This was done in an attempt to increase literacy. For example, look at the sentences Elaine wrote: 就像我现在说的这句话 - Simplified 就像我現在說的這句話 - Traditional 你好吗？- Simplified 你好嗎？- Traditional Both sentences are in Mandarin and they say the exact same thing. They're also very similar visually, although the Simplified characters are... well, simplified. Most characters are exactly the same in both scripts, while some characters are slightly different, and others (the minority) are VERY different. In Google translate you can translate into Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional, but you can only translate from Chinese. This is because knows that "吗" and "嗎" (for example) are the exact same word, and treats them as such when translating from Chinese.

Part 2: The Mandarin in mainland China and the Mandarin in Taiwan are the exact same language, with only slightly different accents; however, Taiwan uses Traditional characters while China uses Simplified characters to write the same language. Cantonese is a completely different language from Mandarin, but if you go to Hong Kong you'll see that Cantonese is written in Traditional characters, exactly like the Mandarin in Taiwan. When I was doing a Cantonese course last year I practised with native speakers from both Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Not many people in Guangzhou can actually write Cantonese, despite being native speakers, but those I practised with wrote it in Simplified characters i.e. they wrote Cantonese sentences with Cantonese grammar, but used simplified characters to do so. Keep in mind that Chinese characters are non-phonetic. This means that cognates between Cantonese, Mandarin and Classical Chinese will use the exact same character, even if they're now pronounced completely differently or they mean something else. Long story short: Mandarin is a language (like English and Norwegian), which can either be written in Simplified and Traditional characters (depending on which country you go to). Before, I described the difference between the two scripts as being like the difference between Latin and Cyrillic, but I think it'd be more appropriate to compare them to fonts. It's sort of like the difference between clear, printed letters and highly stylised cursive handwriting.

Jmat has already answered your question :) Just for information. A long time ago, Mandrin is the language used mostly in northern China. Our central government chose to adopt Mandrin as the only official language in 1932. So, people in other areas have to learn 2 languages at least ( the local language + the official one ). People in the north may consider Mandrin = Chinese, but it is not correct actually.

Simplified Chinese is from Mandrin Chinese, structure is simple, in order to more convenient . In China, use SC, but Hong Kong use MC. In Taiwan, use MC. they're different, but sometimes have some common points, for example: SC:你好吗？ MC:你好嗎？ English:How are u? Wish can help u.

They are complete same thing. Mandarin 普通话 Simplified Chinese 简体中文。 we usually see it in cell phone and computer.