Forty years ago, Oman was one of the Middle East's most backward countries, with fewer than a dozen miles of paved roads and a nearly impenetrable interior populated by heavily armed, warring tribes.

四十年前阿曼是中东最落后的国家之一，当时铺设路面的道路仅有几十英里，而内地则由全副武装的部族所控制，外人难以进入。

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Compared with the developed countries, it remains backward in many fields.

与发达国家相比，我们在许多领域里仍然处于落后状态。

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In fact, they were countries that we called "backward."

事实上，它们就是我们称之为“落后”的国家。

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"We are finding that this is not only in the backward economy of developing countries, even though most forced labor today is indeed in the informal or the background agricultural sector of Asia, Latin America and then Africa."

VOA: standard.2009.08.21

The payments system, in effect, is the plumbing for Britain's financial system, which is often said to be backward in comparison with other countries.

BBC: UK banking reforms: What's new?

With small domestic markets, backward technology and inadequate capital, third-world countries have everything to gain from ending their relative isolation and developing close economic ties with the rest of the world.

ECONOMIST: The future of the state

Such problems will become greater in future because the largest concentrations of poverty are no longer in the backward rural areas but in the anarchic megalopolises of developing countries, like Lagos and Mumbai.

ECONOMIST: Anti-poverty programmes