This has been a lean year for business.

今年是业务上的歉收年。

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The crops suffered from insect plague this year, it will definitely be a lean year.

今年庄稼遭了虫灾，肯定是个歉岁了。

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Advertising leaflets are distributed on high streets selling apartments that had been built up for years. These developers must have had a lean year.

在繁华的街道上人们常会收到楼盘的广告传单，有的楼盘开盘数年还没有售罄，只能用这种方式卖房子，看来开发商的日子不太好过。

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But you have some outs, short of terminating the plan, to reduce contributions in a lean year.

FORBES: Investment Guide: Self-Employment

But, unlike his fellow-villagers, he was renowned for having a deficit: he had been born in a lean year, and, to make matters worse, an estranged aunt had once lifted him from his crib and praised Heaven for what a gorgeous, fat, rosy baby he was thereby sealing forever his fate to be generally impoverished, crippled, struck down and taken by the Devil at some unexpected time, in some terrifying way.

NEWYORKER: The Tiger��s Wife

"I'm not Mr. Anti-Boston, " said Michael Tamarro, a lean 41-year-old Rhode Island physics professor who started the Exeter race.

CNN: Forget Boston: Runners find alternatives to big race