"There are too many people at the party!"
Translation:派对里有太多人了！
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There are too many cups on the table = 桌子上有太多杯子
There are too many people at the party = 排队里有太多人了
Why the extra 了 for present tense？
了 is used for exclamation here instead of indicating the tense. In Chinese, 了 has a lot of different meanings besides past tense.
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Why is it necessary, though? Translating from the English, it does not seem wrong not to include it, even if it adds a nice touch.
That's not quite right, 啦 (la) is mainly used for exclamation, while 了 is used to indicate state change. If le were to be more accurate here, the english would have to be something more like, "(Now) there are too many people at the party!" 排队里有太多人 should be an accepted alternative answer (or the main answer).
In this case 了 used for emphasis together with 太. It has nothing to do with change of state. 太 is rarely used without 了 for emphasis. For example, 太熱了 means "It's too hot", not "It has become too hot".
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"Shang" means not only the preposition "on", "over", but also a verb: "get on" or "attend" or "go to". This verb can get a "le" when its action is perfected. In the case of "going to a party" it is a process "of going to" that at some point has perfected a change in the situation, the overfilling. It's probably this change that is marked by "le". It is a sort of "the table is overfilled" versus "the party HAS been overattended", I think that 了 can usually be considered a prefect tense and be translated as has, have, had.
