---
title: AlternateRepresentation
framework: docc
role: symbol
role_heading: Directive
path: docc/alternaterepresentation
---

# AlternateRepresentation

A directive that configures an alternate language representation of a symbol.

## Declaration

```swift
@AlternateRepresentation(_ reference: TopicReference)
```

## Parameters

- `reference`: A link to another symbol that should be considered an alternate language representation of the current symbol. (required) If you prefer, you can wrap the symbol link in a set of double backticks (``).

## Overview

Overview An API that can be called from more than one source language has more than one language representation. Whenever possible, prefer to define alternative language representations for a symbol by using in-source annotations such as the @objc and @_objcImplementation attributes in Swift, or the NS_SWIFT_NAME macro in Objective-C. If your source language doesn’t have a mechanism for specifying alternate representations or if your intended alternate representation isn’t compatible with those attributes, you can use the @AlternateRepresentation directive to specify another symbol that should be considered an alternate representation of the documented symbol. @Metadata {     @AlternateRepresentation(MyApp/MyClass/property) } If you prefer, you can wrap the symbol link in a set of double backticks (``), or use any other supported syntax for linking to symbols. For more information about linking to symbols, see Linking to Symbols and Other Content. This provides a hint to the renderer as to the alternate language representations for the current symbol. The renderer may use this hint to provide a link to these alternate symbols. For example, Swift-DocC-Render shows a toggle between supported languages, where switching to a different language representation will redirect to the documentation for the configured alternate symbol. Special considerations Links containing a colon (:) must be wrapped in quotes: @Metadata {     @AlternateRepresentation("doc://com.example/documentation/MyClass/property")     @AlternateRepresentation("MyClass/myFunc(_:_:)") } The @AlternateRepresentation directive only specifies an alternate language representation in one direction. To define a two-way relationship, add an @AlternateRepresentation directive, linking to this symbol, to the other symbol as well. You can only configure custom alternate language representations for languages that the documented symbol doesn’t already have a language representation for, either from in-source annotations or from a previous @AlternateRepresentation directive.

## See Also

### Customizing the Languages of an Article

- [SupportedLanguage](docc/supportedlanguage.md)