Quote - It would take days to explain, but translucent only works as a translucent thing on a single sheet of polygons. I have a huge post on this somewhere at the Node Cult.

For all other situations, Translucent is ambient. It's the same as just adding some color regardless of lighting. Same as connecting to Ambient_Color, Diffuse_Color, Specular_Color, Reflection_Color, Refraction_Color - these are all just adders with no lighting model built in. If you plug something in there that doesn't include a lighting model, then it just glows.

OK. So if I have a material which is supposed to be translucent, I should rely on either transparency or fresnel (if it is transparent enough to make a difference) with the color coming from the diffuse node.