Do people who use traditional characters have know how to read simplified? What about those who use simplified can they read traditional? Then which side would have an easier time learning the characters? I've read multiple novels where they go in the past and can't read. So I'm wondering how true that is. Does anyone have experience? For example having to learn traditional characters already knowing simplified or having to learn simplified after already knowing traditional. Or if you learned both, which was harder.
In general, no, they can't. You can mostly skip relearning simplified characters if you commit to memory the basic simplifications, but there would still be some issues. Your best bet for having the least amount of problems when you will be reading from sources in both scripts would be to learn traditional and then those basic simplifications, but given how things are right now, just learning simplified is enough for most cases.
Well, I don't know which would be easier to learn because I only learned one way and cannot unlearn that way and then redo it the other way. But I learned traditional characters first as that's what is used in Taiwan. Everyone here I know can read simplified, and simplified is often used as a kind of shorthand when you need to write quickly. Traditional is more consistent in its construction with regard to the use of radicals. If you see the grass radical you know you're probably dealing with a plant. But not all simplified plant characters have this radical, for example orchid (or thoroughwort if usage is before the Song dynasty): 蘭 (trad) and 兰 (simp). There are fewer strokes in simplified, obviously, but I feel this is mostly irrelevant as every character in either character set is constructed from various individual units. So trad is not as complicated as it looks to the uninitiated. Obviously I'm biased in this having learning trad first. A translator ought to know both, and it's a good idea for anyone serious about learning the language to learn both, that way you can read anything in Chinese no matter where the source is from (talking specifically about physical books here; online you can just use brower plugins to switch between them if you want). If you already know trad, picking up simplified is pretty easy. You don't need any special study really. Just read a bit of it and you will pick it up.
I've learned both. Traditional is easier to learn to read but harder to write. Simplified is much more convenient when writing. Once you learn one it's really easy to learn the other. In general, I think most people would be able to read both, or read enough to at least guess half the characters without actually learning as long as they are somewhat proficient in chinese. When some characters go back to the past and can't read the text, it might be because clerical text or oracle bone text, which predate traditional Chinese, are used. The main dialect spoken back then would likely also have been different, e.g. How many northern chinese can understand cantonese? The grammatical structure of certain dialects are different, which can make text unreadable as well.
I think it depends. Both my parents know both (simplified first, but then they learned traditional, since it's used in many places). I only know simplified, and it's not at a good enough level yet for me to be familiar with the more complex-looking traditional characters, though I do know some from coming across them in my textbooks.
I think if you’re good enough in either of them, you’ll be able to read the the other some way or another. I know traditional, and I can read simplified as easily as traditional, though occasionally there are some words that I’m not sure of. If it is in a sentence traditional or simplified don’t really matter, since I can just guess from my knowledge of the language, and most of the time I’m correct. Writing is a different matter. I learnt to write the most commonly used words in simplified for my exams, and it wasn’t that hard. But if I had to learn the entire simplified system, I’d probably quit in less than half a day.
I learned both at same time before, and still can read both but I prefer simplified because it's easier to read.