A while back, I was reviewing a draft translation of an Indonesian articles of association, and one sentence stopped me:
The Company shall perform business activities in the field of trading.

There is nothing grammatically wrong with it. Every word is doing its job. But no lawyer would write it, because in legal English "business" does not take "perform". It keeps company with a much smaller set of verbs.

So I want to look at the four verbs translators reach for most often (carry on, conduct, perform, carry out) and where each belongs.

Why the verb matters at all

Legal English is built out of fixed pairings. Parties enter into agreements. Rights get exercised, obligations get discharged. You can swap in a near-synonym, and the meaning will usually survive, but the sentence stops sounding like law.

Two things follow from that. The client notices, because an odd collocation is often the first hint that the translator works outside the field. And a court or regulator notices differently: when the wording drifts from the standard phrase, the reader starts wondering whether the drafter meant something else. Lawyers are trained to ask that question.

Choosing the verb, then, is not only a vocabulary decision. It is a decision about register.

Carry on business
This is the legislators' phrase. It turns up wherever a statute needs to say that a business exists and operates. Section 993 of the UK Companies Act 2006 makes fraudulent trading an offense where "any business of a company is carried on with intent to defraud creditors". The OECD Model Tax Convention defines a permanent establishment as a fixed place of business through which an enterprise's business is "wholly or partly carried on" (Article 5). Licensing statutes do the same: nobody may carry on business as a money changer, an insurer, or a broker without a license.

Where you will find it:
• Objects clauses: The Company shall carry on the business of general trading.
• Tax and jurisdiction: carrying on business in Indonesia; carrying on business through a permanent establishment.
• Insolvency and liability: continuing to carry on business while insolvent.
One grammar point worth keeping in mind. With no article, the phrase is general (carry on business). Add the article, and you are naming the trade (carry on the business of shipping). Both are standard English; pick whichever the sentence needs.
Conduct business
Conduct is about manner. It answers "how?", which is why adverbs and standards of performance sit so comfortably beside it, and why you meet it mostly in contracts and governance documents:
• Between signing and completion, the Company shall conduct its business in the ordinary course.
• Each party shall conduct its business in compliance with all applicable laws.
• Employees shall conduct business honestly and with integrity.

This is where translators start to sweat, because the two verbs overlap. "Conduct business in Indonesia" is fine in a commercial letter or a company profile; nobody would blink. My rule of thumb: If you are following a statute, use the verb the statute uses. If the sentence is about standards of behavior, conduct reads better. If it is about the bare fact of trading, use carry on.

Where perform, carry out, and transact belong
None of these is a weak verb. They simply take different objects.
Perform wants things that can be completed and measured against a standard: obligations, duties, services, a contract. "The Supplier shall perform the Services with reasonable skill and care." A business never finishes, which is why it is never performed.

Carry out takes tasks and activities: an audit, an inspection, the works, a resolution. "The Directors shall carry out the resolutions of the General Meeting of Shareholders." Carry out business is understandable English, but in a legal text it reads as something said in an office corridor.

Transact has a single narrow job, and it belongs to meetings, where "business" means the items on the agenda. No business shall be transacted at any general meeting unless a quorum is present. That is its whole range. Use it anywhere else, and it will sound odd.

Translating from Indonesian
Melakukan is the trap. It covers do, perform, and conduct all at once, and the reflex is to render it as perform every time. Melaksanakan pulls in the same direction. The way out is to ignore the Indonesian verb for a moment, look at its object, and then choose whatever English verb that object normally takes:

• menjalankan usaha / menjalankan perusahaan: carry on business. The act of operating.
• melakukan kegiatan usaha: conduct (or carry on) business activities, especially where a field or a standard is attached.
• melaksanakan kewajiban: perform its obligations.
• melaksanakan tugas: carry out or perform its duties; both are standard.
• melaksanakan keputusan RUPS: carry out the resolutions of the GMS.

Which means the sentence I started with should read: The Company shall carry on business in the field of trading. Same meaning as before, only now it sounds like articles of association written in English.

Two questions and you are done

When business is the object, ask yourself:
• Does the sentence say whether, or where, the business operates? Carry on.
• Does it say how the business is run? Conduct.
If the real object is an obligation, a task, or an agenda item, then business was never the object in the first place. Perform, carry out, and transact are waiting.
A short reference
• Carry on: business, trade. Statutes, objects clauses, tax, licensing. "carry on business in Indonesia"
• Conduct: business, activities. Covenants, compliance clauses, codes of conduct. "conduct its business in the ordinary course"
• Perform: obligations, services, a contract. Operative clauses. "perform its obligations hereunder"
• Carry out: tasks, audits, works, resolutions. Operative and governance clauses. "carry out an audit"
• Transact: agenda items, that is, "business" at a meeting. Meeting provisions. "no business shall be transacted"

One last thing
None of this is a grammar rule, and I would not want to give the impression that it is. Collocations are professional habits, and habits differ from one jurisdiction to the next and from one decade to the next. A UK statute, a US merger agreement and a Singapore license will not always agree with one another.

So before you deliver, run one cheap check: search the legislation or the model contracts of the target legal system for your verb plus "business". If the drafters there never use it, your reader will notice when you do.

The sentence I opened with was never wrong in meaning. It just didn't sound like it had come from a lawyer's desk. In legal translation, that difference is the job.