The univeral translator is one of those plot devices, which, out of universe we can recognize is because the writers doesn't want to have to deal with language barriers all the time in episodes so we can handwave the problem of language aside.

In Statistical Probabilities (6x09), there's a scene where a group of supermutants manage to find out that during a high stakes negotiation with the Dominion, the universal translator failed to capture the nuance of the specific tense in a sentence spoken by the other side, which allows the team to discover a plot macguffin.

Scene below; granted, the relevant portion is only like a few sentences, but it suddenly came to mind again recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTtpbDMgXR4

With the advent of machine translation today, I couldn't help but get a sense of deja vu today.…