‘The Essence of Light in Translation’ takes the move from George Steiner’s After Babel and his observations on the word ‘Light’. Scope of the present contribution envisages to highlight the awareness of the dynamics of ‘otherness’ and diachronic variation by examining the one key-word (Light) as it is thematized and foregrounded in sacred texts across cultures, with a focus on English and varieties of English. The comparative approach here focuses on parallel texts and intertexts to propose a different ‘vision’ of a major theme, where conceptual and semantic variation accounts for the choice of one specific theme, i.e. spiritual illumination, revelation, and the resulting creation and ‘trans-creation’ of the same theme in translation.