Sorry to reply to my own post. It bothered me that I literally knew no good substitute in English for "literally". Did some research, and the best that I found is the phrase "without exaggeration", which actually seems usable to me and might be more likely to be understood than "literally" is today.

"I got literally hundreds of bug reports today" may not be appreciated correctly (a listener who doesn't know me might think that I got 12 and I'm just whining), but "Speaking without exaggeration, I got hundreds of bug reports today" seems airtight.

Or maybe it's time to import >>wörtlich<< into English.