how to preserve interface language for a multilingual website? I have a multilingual website with five different languages represented. I have to manage and maintain all the languages, but each time I switch to a particular translation for a piece of content the interface changes too.

I speak English - how do I maintain the interface language in English while managing the translated content?

This too is true for coworkers - the native Japanese speaker needs to be able to maintain the Japanese while he works.

The language preferences for each user is set to their native language - is there a way to have that enforce the interface language we are working in when administering the site?

thanks
Your best bet might be the Administration Language module. It allows you to set the general and user specific administration language. The module doesn't seem to be maintained currently/anymore though and there's only a dev version for the Drupal 7.x branch so you may want to check the bug reports and test it first. I've used it on a few sites without running into any major issues so it should be worth a shot still.