Final answer:
The horizontal translation of quadrilateral WXYZ to W'X'Y'Z' is described by determining if WXYZ moved to the right or left along the coordinate system's x-axis, focusing solely on the horizontal movement without considering any vertical shifts.
Step-by-step explanation:
To describe the horizontal translation used to move quadrilateral WXYZ onto quadrilateral W'X'Y'Z', one must determine whether the movement of the quadrilateral is parallel to the x-axis (left or right) or parallel to the y-axis (up or down) in the coordinate system. Since we are focusing on horizontal movements, we need to ignore any vertical shifts and only consider the motion along the x-axis.
If the quadrilateral WXYZ has been moved to the right to overlap with quadrilateral W'X'Y'Z', this would be described as a translation horizontally to the right side of the coordinate system. If it has been moved to the left, then it would be a translation horizontally to the left side of the coordinate system. This process of analyzing the movement of shapes on a coordinate plane involves understanding kinematic equations and two-dimensional vector problems.
In this case, a convenient coordinate system has been chosen with one axis horizontal (x-axis) and the other vertical (y-axis), allowing us to project movements onto these axes to describe translations.