The "terribleness" is a feature. It means I can be confident that the meaning of fluent output corresponds to the meaning of the input: I'm capable of hand-translating any passages the computer can't, but I'm not capable of proof-reading all the translations to spot fluent confabulations.
LLM can translate in the style you want them to. You can make them translate more creatively or just translate word by word. I even think you can make them explain their choice of translation and help you proof-read the result.
