Some Theory About Universal Translators...

[ANejat]

Have you ever realised that there are a lot of "foreigners" or foreigner-looking people that speak perfect English? For example, a notable one is Worf, having parents who have Russian accent, but himself having a Klingon-ish American accent. You might say this is a utopic (quite dystopic in my opinion) scenario where all of Starfleet speak the same way; but if you look at the characters, there are British characters who don't speak in American accent while no one in Starfleet uses Indian accent (Eugenics Wars, maybe because of that ':/). What I'm implying is that Worf speaks Russian (not Klingon, if he spoke Klingon, the translator would have corrected it to perfect English whenever he tried to speak Klingon) to his universal translator which translates it to perfect English; while Capt. Picard is actually speaking French which is translated to (perfect) English.
Anyways, this is not a very proper theory and it can be disproved, but it should make sense when you think about it.

 

[at Quark's]

My theory is that we're hearing each and every character as rendered by the UT for our benefit, no one excepted.

After all, it's not very likely that 2370 characters still would speak in late 20th/early 21st century English vernacular. We don't speak Shakespearean era English anymore, either.

 

[Oddish]

I think they just stick a little yellow fish in your ear, and it tells you what you want to hear.

 

[cgervasi]

What I'm implying is that Worf speaks Russian (not Klingon, if he spoke Klingon, the translator would have corrected it to perfect English whenever he tried to speak Klingon) to his universal translator which translates it to perfect English; while Capt. Picard is actually speaking French which is translated to (perfect) English.

I never recall them saying they're speaking English. For example, in The Last Outpost Data says "resolving it into our language."
My theory is they all learn an interstellar constructed language, similar to Esperanto in that it's designed to be easy to learn. People speak that interstellar language for scholarly writing, interstellar business, UFP government and Starfleet. Two people from France might speak French because they spoke it in the home, but people who speak Spanish and Portuguese would commonly use the interstellar language, even though they could speak slowly and rely on the bit of mutual intelligibility that exists between their native languages.
I imagine the UT is good enough to have a long conversation, but it's not as good as speaking. I imagine it being like having a much more advance Google Translate right in your ear.

 

[Herald252]

In Picard season 1 it was said "speak English" by romulans, so it seems UT makes everything a universal English at least in latest version of the canon

 

[Finn]

And do they have holographic projectors so the people would seem to be mouthing English words as well?