thanks again Bianca - I did speak with mathematica help chat directly, and they solved it for me (Charlie).

The mac the menu turned out to be different - it is under mathematica-preferences, which is the second item on the mathematica list. you can get to the preferences menu directly by "command ,", which greatly helps if everything is in chinese.

after selecting english language, on the preferences menu, as you stated the key was to restart for the changes to take effect. this was something i could not read as it was in chinese still!