Cantonese sounds distinct compared to Mandarin, its mutualy unintelligible with each other. Younger people like me who went to school in China would understsnd Mandarin, but older people were never taught Mandarin, and its much harder compared to just accent imitation, its almost as different as two different languages, well... it's not that different, since both use the same writing system, spoken cantonese is slightly more colloquial, but when it's written formally, its would be understandable to any Chinese Language Variants (commonly known as "Dialects" but I dislike that term), so you basically pronounce the same characters in a different way. If they can read and write, they don't really need a translator/interpreter. Just grab a pen xD.

Its not just the tones, but also a lot more amount of pronouncible sounds there is.

(Jyutping and Pinyin represent different sounds btw, its not an IPA replacement)

Like 食 (to eat)

Cantonese Jyutping is sik6
Mandarin Pinyin is si2

時 (time)

Cantonese Jyutping is si4
Mandarin Pinyin is si2

(Difference highlighted in bold)

Not only is there more tones, there's also the -p -t -k endings to the sound, so you get much more variety, less homophones.

I always love the following two:

劍 (Sword)

Cantonese Jyutping: gim3
Mandarin Pinyin: jian4

箭 (Arrow)

Cantonese Jyutping: zin3
Mandarin Pinyin: jian4

Imagine being at war, and Mandarin speakers lost because they accidentally brought swords to an bow and arrow fight lmao.

Or this:

雪 (Snow)

Cantonese Jyutping: syut3
Mandarin Pinyin: xue3

血 (Blood)

Cantonese Jyutping: hyut3
Mandarin Pinyin: xue3

Imagine this conversation (imagine its happening in Mandarin):

"There's a lot of [xuě] outside!"

"Oh yea its beautiful, isn't it. First time seeing [xuě] (snow)?"

"No there's a lot of [xuě]! SOMEONE DIED, there's [xuě] EVERWHERE!"

Get it? Because Snow and Blood sound the exact same in Mandarin. Lmfao.

I always love Cantonese more, but yea tankies are gonna call me racist and "han traitor". I'm like: Homie, northern colonizers are forcibly trying to assimulate Guangdong in to speaking a conquerer's language, calm down lol. CCP Tankies are just like the early US colonizers forcing the natives to speak a different language.