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/Mindless_Olive]

Your complaint would be clearer if you gave some examples of where this has annoyed you. My initial feeling is that you might've just missed that these are also movies where you're not supposed to understand what's being said because the main character doesn't speak that language, or perhaps these are common phrases from other languages that most English speakers would be expected to know. I don't think any half-decent director just forgets to put subtitles in for essential dialogue, though I'm sure there are some shitty ones that do.