I suggest we borrow from the approach in Views and put human-readable text in the operator selectors.
Something like this code from views.module:

 /**
 * A list of greater / equal / less than
 */
function views_handler_operator_gtlt() {
  return array('>' => t("Is Greater Than"), '>=' => t("Is Greater Than Or Equals"), '=' => t("Is Equal To"), '!=' => t("Is Not Equal To"), '<=' => t("Is Less Than Or Equals"), '<' => t("Is Less Than"));
}