The weather service

The twenty-eighth entry is le contrôle qualité des données, and in it la qualité means exactly what « quality » means: how good the measurements are, whether a reading is plausible, whether a station has drifted. That is one half of the word. The other half never crossed into English, and it turns up in every administrative text a weather service produces. La qualité of a person is the capacity in which that person acts. En qualité de témoin means as a witness; il signe en qualité de directeur means he signs as director; and a form asking for nom, prénom et qualité wants your name and your position, not a boast. Lawyers take it further. Avoir qualité pour agir is to have standing to bring a case, and ès qualités means in an official capacity rather than as a private person. So when an incident report says that somebody intervened en sa qualité de prévisionniste, it is recording the role he held that night, and saying nothing whatever about how good he was at it.