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For many languages, a translation into the main dialect is intelligible by all speakers of the language. Speakers of another dialect can have a separate translation if they wish so. In fact, since the fallback mechanism implemented in GNU libc and GNU libintl applies on a per-message basis, the message catalog for the dialect needs only to contain the translations that differ from those in the main language.
For example,
French speakers in Canada (that is, users in the locale fr_CA)
can use and do accept translations
produced by French speakers in France (typical file name: fr.po).
Nevertheless, the translation system with PO files
enables them to produce special message catalogs (file name: fr_CA.po)
that will take priority over fr.po for users in that locale.
Similarly for users in Austria,
where message catalogs de_AT.po take priority
over the catalogs named de.po that reflect German as spoken in Germany.
The situation is different for Chinese, though:
Since users in the People’s Republic of China and in Singapore
want translations with Simplified Chinese characters,
whereas Chinese users in other territories
(such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao)
want translations with Traditional Chinese characters,
no translator should ever submit a file named zh.po.
Instead, there will typically be two separate translation teams:
a team that produces translations with Simplified Chinese characters
(file name zh_CN.po)
and a team that produces translations with Traditional Chinese characters
(file name zh_TW.po).