The new translucency scattering allows translucent light to travel through the surface from a global illumination souce rather than just direct light sources.
The quality of this scattered light is automatically linked with the quality settings you have set for your global illumination.
My scene here just has a swirly thing in it and an HDR image probe lighting the scene. I call the swirly thing Frank. The HDR is the kitchen probe image and has been dialled down to 0.1 of it's regular intensity.
Frank's looking a bit boring. As if he's just been lit by an HDR image without anyone setting up his skin properly.
I try to help Frank out by setting his translucency to 1, his diffusion to 0.1 and his translucency colour to green.
Alas, Frank's impossible to consolidate. He's still just a boring little twirl.
Then it hits me. I know what will cheer Frank up! I'll set his scatter setting to 1 so the light can bounce around inside him and make him feel all warm and fuzzy inside!
"That's it!" says Frank. "Now I'm having lots of fun."