Mr. Shelling joined the traditional Tibetan Government in 1954 after spending two years at St. Joseph's School in Darjeeling, India studying English. He is an expert in Tibetan language and history and participated as an editor on the center's Tibetan-English dictionary project from 1994 - 97. He has also translated T. Paine's "Common Sense" into Tibetan, as well as Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice. He is trilingual in Chinese, Tibetan and English.