Thus says the LORD: This is the only occurrence of this formula in this chapter in which the words “of hosts” are omitted. Good News Translation has no equivalent. See the comments on verse 2.
The rest of the verse consists of four clauses. The first and second are parallel with each other, as are the third and fourth. There is also an A-B-B-A pattern in the way the place names are mentioned: Zion … Jerusalem … Jerusalem … the mountain of the LORD of hosts. However, this pattern may well be lost in translation, depending on the extent to which translators can retain the parallelism of the four clauses. Some modern versions such as Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch keep the parallelism and the chiastic (A-B-B-A) order in which the names are mentioned, but Good News Translation does not. It is more important to make the meaning clear than to keep the poetic features of the Hebrew language. However, it is possible to make the meaning clear without losing all the poetic features. For instance, Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente, Bible en français courant, and Contemporary English Version all keep the parallel statements, the former in an A-A-B-B pattern, and the latter two in an A-B-A-B pattern. Both of these seem more satisfactory than the Good News Translation structure.
I will return to Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: These two clauses are parallel with each other and say basically the same thing (compare 1.16; 2.10). As is often the case where Zion and Jerusalem are parallel like this, Zion, which refers to the hill on which the Temple stood, emphasizes the religious importance rather than the political importance of the city. Good News Translation thus translates both together as “Jerusalem, my holy city.” This fits well with the second half of the verse, where the expression equivalent to Zion is the mountain of the LORD of hosts. The LORD promises not only to return to Jerusalem, but also to dwell there, or as Good News Translation says in more modern terms, to “live there.” For this idea, compare Ezek 43.1-5.
The faithful city recalls the language of Isa 1.21, 26. The expression describes the character of the inhabitants rather than of the city itself, and some translators may need to make this clear by saying “the city where people are faithful to me.”
The mountain of the LORD of hosts, the holy mountain means the hill where the Temple was, and in some languages it may be better to say this. A possible translation base is “the hill where the LORD Almighty has his Temple will be called the sacred hill” or “Mount Zion where the LORD Almighty has his Temple will be called the sacred mountain.” For this type of language, compare Joel 3.17.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Zechariah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2002. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .