Possible to exchange keys and preserve backlight?

Hi guys!

I've bought a Macbook Pro 15" unibody (A1286) from a friend of mine and well it has a german keyboard. It's not a deal-breaker, I'm able to write without really looking at the keyboard. For programming however, the different special characters are pretty useful and they're out of place on the english layout.

My question now is, if buying an english/US keyboard off ebay without backlight (saves about half the price...), peeling off the single keys (I've tried, they're detachable on this keyboard and they are on my old Dell...) and exchanging them one-by-one preserve the backlight?

I mean how does the backlight actually work, is it just set under the semi-transparent keys?