@elezend
Actually I myself (as I believed many others individuals and scan groups on mangadex, yet I only represent my own opinion here and am not speaking obh of other) do aware of the legality aspect of any manga/manhua/manhwa. Their respect of the original author and artist is the very ground reason the rules on mangadex exist, whereas you will find many if not all scanlators who would immediately dropped their project once the official release for that particular language is available, even before they were requested to by the original author/publisher.
Also,many dedicated scangroups goes their extent to basing their works on the paywalled original raws, instead of free screenshots from aggregator sites that illegally profits from the ads.
“This is something that people keep forgetting, the manga/manhwa/manhua belongs to its original author/artist and nobody else. Should I be asking them for permission before I start translating?”
Look here, I never wanted to argue or stopping you from doing you, but honestly, the way you use those phrase above is so twisted and worse is contradictory to what you did. Just because you argue it doesn’t belong to nobody else beside the author/artist, doesn’t mean that what you do are better/purer/more right than the other. And you do realize that your raws are coming from aggregators sites right?
And yes to your question if you want to justify that what you do is at least better in legality (since yours are flawed in quality of images and translations, and therefore lesser resources and effort compare to the other scangroup(s)), no one stopping you from asking permission to the original author.
Again, not a single person here can/will stop you from doing what you do/did here; In fact many here are appreciating your uploads. However my last point still stand valid, if we can’t -or even worse- will not respect other’s effort/work, don’t expect people to respect ours.