Transcreation is what wxrks calls the workflow for creative, adaptation-heavy content — marketing campaigns, taglines, ads — where a single literal translation isn't enough and a linguist needs room to propose a few different renderings before one is picked. The feature that supports this is Alternative Translations: it lets a vendor add more than one candidate translation to a segment, back-translate each one so a reviewer can confirm it still says what the source says, and discuss the choice in comments, all inside the Editor.
💡 Who is this for? This guide is for Account Admins and Vendors who need to turn on and use Alternative Translations for transcreation-style projects within the wxrks platform.
Key concepts
Alternative Translation: a candidate translation added to a segment in addition to its main target text. A segment can hold up to 30 alternatives, each edited and managed independently of the main translation.
Back Translation: a translation of an alternative back into the source language, generated automatically by machine translation (or another AI translation feature configured for the project) so a reviewer or client can sanity-check that the alternative hasn't drifted from the original meaning without needing to read the target language.
1. Turn on Alternative Translations for an Organizational Unit
Alternative Translations is off by default and is enabled per Organizational Unit:
Go to Organizations > Organizational Units and open the unit you want to enable it for.
On the General tab, click More settings to expand the settings grid.
Turn on Enable Alternative Translations, then click Save.
This setting is not retroactive. It only applies to projects created after you turn it on — any project that already existed under this Organizational Unit will not gain the feature, even after you enable the setting. Plan to turn this on before creating the transcreation project, not partway through it.
2. Add alternative translations in the Editor
Once a segment belongs to a project with the setting enabled, every segment in the Editor shows an Alternative Translations button above the target box. Click it to expand the panel — it starts empty for a segment with no alternatives yet:
Type a candidate translation into the Add an alternative translation... field and click Add. Use Fill with Existing instead if you want to start from whatever is already in the target box (or the source text, if the target is still empty) and adjust it from there.
A segment with at least one saved alternative is marked with a small tree-like icon next to its number, so you can spot which segments have alternatives while scanning a file. Each alternative appears in its own card, numbered Alternative 1, Alternative 2, and so on, with three actions:
Lock / Unlock: an alternative is editable while unlocked; lock it once you're done to prevent further changes.
Remove: deletes the alternative. This is only available during the first workflow step (typically Translation) — once the segment has moved to a later step such as review, alternatives can no longer be removed, only added or applied.
Apply: promotes that alternative to become the segment's main target translation.
Good to know: alternatives don't count toward Translation Memory. Only the segment's main translation is written to TM — none of its alternative suggestions or their back translations are saved there.
3. Check meaning with Back Translation
Each alternative can carry its own back translation, shown right under it. wxrks generates this automatically once you add the alternative; use the refresh icon to regenerate it, or the edit icon to correct it by hand if you have permission to edit back translations.
This is the fastest way for a reviewer or client who doesn't read the target language to confirm that a more creative alternative still says what the source says, without having to trust the linguist's word for it.
4. Discuss an alternative in Comments
Alternatives support the same commenting you'd use on any segment, with one addition: you can tie a comment to one specific alternative instead of the segment as a whole. Open the Comments tab in the Editor's side panel, write your note, and — when the segment has at least one alternative — a Quote dropdown appears letting you pick which alternative the comment refers to before you submit:
This is useful for explaining why an alternative reads the way it does — tone, a client brief, a pun that doesn't translate literally — so a reviewer or client sees the reasoning next to the option instead of having to ask about it separately. One limitation to keep in mind: comments on alternatives can be added but not deleted afterward.
Exporting alternatives, back translations, and comments
If you export a project as a bilingual XLSX file, any segment with alternative translations includes extra Alternative Translation, Back Translation, and Comments columns alongside the usual Source/Target columns — see How to export and import a bilingual XLSX file in wxrks for the full export walkthrough. This gives a client or reviewer everything needed to compare every option offline, without opening the Editor.
Related articles
wxrks Editor — a full tour of the Editor this feature lives in.
Vendor's Quick Guide — general Editor navigation for vendors, if you're new to translating in wxrks.
How to export and import a bilingual XLSX file in wxrks — where Alternative Translation, Back Translation, and Comments columns show up in an offline export.
Understanding Steps in wxrks Workflows — what a "first workflow step" actually means for the Remove restriction above.