Simple explanation: Translucence allows information to flow through a system without any delay due to a bottle neck. 

History: Translucence was defined through an intellectual interaction, in early 2008, within part of the founding group.  Translucence is a property of a system of interacting finite state machines.  Note that translucence might conceivably be produced from more than one specific implementation of a set of specifications.  One instance of a proposed specification for a translucent system exists and much of what is written about transcluence is based on that specification.

Nature of first principles: As is true for all of the first principles, the first principle relies on some or all of the other first principles to produce the desired functions. 

Functions provided by computational translucence: 

Optimality: The flow of data and process models will be optimal in the sense of the number of bits transmitted and in the use of a mechanism for the pre-ordering of all structural information. Translucent computing require a specific type of structural specification that accounts for the generative nature of backplate-based data or process models.  This requirement is meet when there exists a sub-stratum of known compositional atoms, having the property that any required designed process may be optimally designed using a composition of these atoms. 

Requirements

Design closure: There is a requirement that all data and process design be completed using a global meta-machine.  A prototype of this kind of machine does exists, and adequate formal theory does exist.  So we are not required to show something that has not already been specified. 

Composition of any particular from a subset of all universals: The optimal specification must be in the form of a composition of universals, or classes defined in formal ontology, and thus "stratified" in the sense that each actual specification must be composed from a set of underlying structural atoms.  The reason for this is that processes are transacted using computer processors. 

Existence of a finite and known transaction memory:  The class of all processors have certain types of machinery and in many cases the processing will be broken up into, possibly parallel, transactions.  These transactions must conform to a memory of transaction types, the so called transaction memory.  Knowledge of transaction memory must be known at each node of the system of finite state machines.