Steven Spielberg on 'West Side Story' subtitles: It's 'disrespectful' - New York Post

The musical won’t be using any English subtitles during scenes where Spanish dialogue is spoken.

The Oscar-winning director recently addressed the lack of subtitles and defended his decision for not using them.

The “Jaws” filmmaker continued, “It would make English the dominant language, because then there would be two being spoken: the English by the characters speaking and the English that would [be written] underneath the spoken Spanish words.”.

It’s worth noting that the United States has no official language, but English and Spanish are tallied as the first- and second-most-widely spoken languages by Americans, with more than 41 million people in this country who regularly use the latter.