Mark Gibson
CEO of GRC Health — on linguistic validation, patient voice, and what a real partnership looks like
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Mark Gibson has been a LinkedIn connection of mine since around 2010. Over the years we crossed paths, collaborated on translations, and kept in touch through the background noise of professional life. When the conversation about a deeper partnership came up, it felt less like a business decision and more like a natural next step. TIL brings the translation expertise. GRC brings the linguistic validation framework and research rigour. It is, as Mark puts it, yin and yang.
My name is Mark Gibson, and I run Gibson Research Consultancy — which people started calling GRC Health, because that's what we specialise in. We work in health communication and health research, particularly in making sure that patient-facing documents are understandable across the world. That takes us into readability testing of package leaflets, health literacy testing, medication guides, and cognitive debriefing within the linguistic validation of clinical outcome assessments.
I've been doing patient-related research for about thirty years now — depressingly, it was 1996 when I did my first qualitative interviews with patients.
I'm a linguist, primarily. I did a translation and interpreting degree, then went into sociolinguistics — that became the passion of my life. From there I got into medical journalism, usability testing of health technologies, qualitative research with patients, and comprehension testing as a natural extension of all of those things.
I had a brief academic career, a PhD I never finished. In the period where I was supposed to be doing the literature review, I learned seven languages instead. I thought learning Danish and Swahili was more important. But that time completely shaped who I am — it gave me the research foundation to apply real academic rigour to a commercial setting.
As for translation — I still am a geek about it. I'd say I'm a good translator, but not accomplished — I left it too soon. But bizarrely, before I even went to university, I was already working as an interpreter. The wild west days of the early 90s. I'd been teaching myself Portuguese from a Hugo Teach Yourself Portuguese book — I was on lesson six when they asked: do you speak Portuguese? I said, well, I'm learning it. They said: we have a Brazilian team — Fluminense. That was my first assignment. I remember going to the bathroom with a pocket dictionary, looking up the word for mushrooms. Cogumelos. I'll never forget it.
The first thing I'd say is that translators don't realise how good they already are at analysis — just thinking analytically. That is a key skill in any kind of patient voice research. You take it for granted, but you're doing mental algebra every time you translate.
What needs to shift is the mindset. Translation tends toward prescriptivism — the dictionary says this, the grammar book says that. Linguistic validation is the opposite: pure sociolinguistics, real-world language as it's actually spoken. Sometimes you get translators with what I'd call an immature attitude, like the language is their pet. You need to break out of that.
In terms of training — and I have to be transparent because I teach on it — I would point to Nur Ferrante's course. It's a professional training course for linguists, not an academic degree, but the depth and texture of it are remarkable. I was a teaching assistant on one of the editions, almost as a student myself, and I fell in love with every one of the participants. Serious, curious people — exactly what this field needs.
“Linguistic validation is like Seven Dials in Covent Garden — the roundabout where linguistics, semiotics, semantics, clinical science, and cognitive research all converge. And right now, it talks to nobody. That’s a shame.”
I would just completely steal Nur's course — but make it a master's. Seriously though, I wouldn't have linguistic validation as a degree in itself. I would make it one component of a broader master's in patient voice research. You need to develop peripheral vision — what other skills are adjacent, where does the expertise transfer? Health literacy testing, readability testing, usability testing, qualitative research. Linguistic validation would be one part, not even the central part.
The reason I'd structure it that way is the frustration I have with the industry: everyone working in silos. Medical writers, user testers, usability specialists, health literacy experts, and linguistic validation teams can all be in the same building, and nobody is talking to anybody else. There is incredible scope for cross-pollination. It's just not happening.
It's yin and yang, really. GRC can do translation, but we're not that interested in it, to be honest. We don't have the depth of expertise that TIL has in translation management, language knowledge, project experience. On the other hand, we offer the research expertise and the international network — we've completed over 11,000 individual projects, across more than 200 countries and territories.
We've known each other since around 2010 — and this feels like the natural next step. We also don't like the transaction of: project, invoice, what's the point. We want to develop human relationships. We fill in the gaps where you're lacking, and you fill in the gaps where we're lacking. It's pretty perfect in that respect.
Mark and I have been talking about doing this properly for a long time. What strikes me most is how naturally our work fits together — not because we planned it that way, but because we share the same values: rigour, curiosity, and a deep respect for the people at the end of every document. We are genuinely delighted to be formalising this partnership, and we look forward to joining forces on projects that neither of us could do as well alone.