Things were very much changed since before the war, he reflected.

从战争开始前情况就已经发生了很大的变化，他想到。

《柯林斯英汉双解大词典》

He retired long before the war.

他在战争之前早就退休了。

《牛津词典》

She's lived there since before the war.

她从战前起就一直住在那里。

《牛津词典》

He began with education. Before the war, female children in Japan received little if any education.

VOA: special.2009.05.24

Satan's saying that before the war in heaven, God's power just seemed like any other king's power, as if God sat on the throne of heaven merely because of those humanly constructed reasons of tradition, or of old repute or consent or custom.

撒旦是说在这场天上的大战之前，上帝的力量就和其他国王的力量一样，他坐在天堂的宝座上似乎仅仅是因为,人们自己营造的原因和传统，或者说是他过期的声望，他制定的法规以及约定俗成的规矩。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

Then from 1820 to 1860, the forty years before the war, an estimated roughly two million American slaves were sold to satisfy the need of slave labor in the great cotton kingdom of the growing Southwest.

之后从1820年到1860年,这战争前的四十年间,据粗略统计有大约两百万美国奴隶被出售,以满足西南部,这个日益增长的棉业帝国对奴隶劳工的需求

耶鲁公开课 - 美国内战与重建课程节选

We have been here going on five days now, a few days before the war began.

CNN: Kevin Sites: Kurds see bombing on northern Iraqi positions

Before the war it carried 900, 000 barrels a day from northern Iraq to Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

FORBES: Iraq's Wildcats

"They had, before the war, infrastructure in Iraq, and some of that remains, " he said.

CNN: Sources: Al Qaeda-linked Jordanian eyed in bombing