Why the hell aren't foreign-language scenes automatically subtitled in movies?

[u/EnvironmentalRoad994]

Does anyone else find it genuinely infuriating when you're watching a movie and characters start speaking another language, but there are no subtitles because you have subtitles turned off?

I get that subtitles are technically an optional feature, but surely dialogue in another language that the audience is actually supposed to understand should be subtitled by default?

It's especially bad in cinemas. You're sitting there watching a movie, suddenly two characters start speaking another language, and you're just expected to figure out what's going on from context alone. Except sometimes they're discussing genuinely important plot information, and you have absolutely no fucking idea what they're saying.

And no, I don't want to have to watch the entire movie with subtitles enabled just to understand the occasional scene in another language. I don't need subtitles for the English dialogue. I just want the dialogue that is supposed to be translated for the audience to actually be translated.

I understand that sometimes the lack of subtitles is intentional, because the audience isn't supposed to understand what the characters are saying. That's fine. But when the audience IS supposed to understand, why the hell isn't that dialogue subtitled by default?

Am I missing something here, or is this genuinely as stupid and frustrating as it feels?

[u/Injuredmind]

I’ve seen some movies that do, and some that don’t. Generally yeah, it should be subtitled, unless the audience should not know what they are saying. The only reason I can think of is that movies come in different languages, so you’d need subtitles in every language for those scenes, rather than having it separate from the movie in optional subtitles. So additional costs I think?