Option-Letter Combinations Won't Work in Keyboard Shortcuts

In order to set what my hands and my Avant Stellar programmable keyboard are used to, I need to change the edit keystroke combinations from Command-X (Cut), Command-C (Copy), etc., to Option-X, Option-C, etc.
But I can't get Keyboard Shortcuts to work with Option-letter combinations. The proper combination shows up in the Keyboard Shortcuts screen and even in the Pages menu, but the keystroke combinations don't work. Instead of the requested menu action, I get what looks like an "approximately equals" sign (for Option-X), a letter from a foreign alphabet (for Option-C) or the beginning of a square root sign (for Option-V).
The Keyboard Shortcuts screen shows no warning of a conflict, and none of the default Keyboard Shortcuts seems to use these precise keystroke combinations.
Does Keyboard Shortcuts not support Option-letter combinations? I've got it to work with several other keystroke combinations, so I don't think I'm missing anything basic. But I can't find anything in Apple Help, this Website or on Google saying that Option-letter combinations are verboten.
I was trying to set up Keyboard Shortcuts in a restricted account, which I use for daily work for security reasons, but I also tried the same things in an administrative account and got the same results. It shouldn't make any difference, should it? I also tried both left and right Alt keys (the equivalent of Option on my keyboard), with no difference.
Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks for the quick reply. On second thought, I don't think Ukelele will do what I want.
The problem is not switching or reprogramming keys. My present keyboard (an Avant Stellar) is fully programmable. It can even double the same output on two or more keys.
My problem is Apple's keyboard shortcuts. The right and left word navigation and selection functions, which I use thousands of times a day for navigating text, are welded to the Option key. So are Apple's (inflexible) special character keys. So if I program my keyboard to put the much-used navigation/selection functions under the same keystroke combinations I've been using for twenty years, many of my other usual keystroke combos become useless (they give me unwanted characters).
There is a solution, however: OpenOffice. I recently discovered that the slightly dumbed-down version that comes with Ubuntu Linux Netbook (which I installed on my Acer Aspire One) has a much more flexible keyboard shortcut feature than OS X, plus a macro capability. In less than an hour, I had my Acer keyboard configured closely enough to my habitual board for normal use. I then downloaded OpenOffice 3.1.1 on my Mini, and in another twenty minutes had both its and the Acer's keyboards configured as identically as the Acer's hardware permits.
So OpenOffice, not Apple, may have saved me the ignominy (and frustration) of continuing to use M/S Word, which I've wanted to jettison ever since I switched to Macs in 2003 and had to abandon WordPerfect.
Oracle, which just acquired Sun, swears on its Website that it will continue supporting OpenOffice (which Sun developed to poke M/S). Time will tell. Meanwhile, I've got OpenOffice, Pages and Word running in my working account, and I suspect I'll be using Open Office from now on for most serious writing. I like Apple's intuitive presentation of formulas in Numbers (its spreadsheet program), but Pages is for multimedia, multitasking Millennials, not serious writers.

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