I’d love to be able to use rect lights for character rendering. Sadly they still don’t support specularity on translucent materials.
Just checked in 4.27 and rect lights still don’t support specular highlights on translucent surfaces. Even an approximation would be better than nothing. I know this seems like a small thing, but lacrimal fluid highlights are crucial for realistic human rendering.
It works! Thank you so much for this issue. 
I have a material with the Blend Mode set to Translucent and the Lighting Mode set to Surface Forward Shading.