UncleMito, are you using mental ray to render? if not then you're not going to see any translucency
i googled maya translucency (GecT's blog was one of the first results 
) to see if there was anything else, but this mac would just slow down and stop working.
that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"
Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D