I also like Kate. I use it for Python, Html/css and some other stuff. I really like it since it’s light and fast but full of features. Also integrates well with my desktop.
Yes. Manjaro is a so unsable and garbage (for many reasons). Though Arch (EndeavourOS in my case) has been a lot stable for me due to my experience.
Subtitle composer can do that: https://subtitlecomposer.kde.org/
Also Kdenlive has a feature for it as I know, though I never tested: https://docs.kdenlive.org/en/effects_and_compositions/speech_to_text.html