Suziq, that's perfect, given what I gave you. One question though -- and this is a matter of taste. In the previous sentence, the author uses a naval metaphor. I'm worried if I switch from a ship following a course in one sentence to a ski slope in the next, my translation will make the author seem to be mixing metaphors, and that's unfair. What do you think?

a slalom course, to me, suggests a (somewhat) controlled manner of going down the hill. Schlingern is out of control, like veering

Although watching Bode Miller on a slalom course makes me wonder if it is ALWAYS controlled...
But a bigger problem is that this is a translation of a sentence in which the author doesn't provide the two opposite poles -- so I can't say veering between, because I don't have the A and B to put after between. I really need a noun that describes the trajectory (up and down) by itself... Ugh.

To use the old naval term: Rolling and pitching between dependence and autonomy.

bouncing up and down

But you do have A and B, don't you? "Abhängigkeit und Autonomie"

Also, I wrote (somewhat) controlled for a reason. ;-)

@Mary - how about putting in a larger chunk of text ...?

@dude - is veering necessarily out of control?

Oops, my mistake. Serves me right for shortening my 'Beispiel'. I didn't want to stick the whole paragraph in, so I included those words from the previous paragraph to make the context clear -- but they're not in the actual sentence. Now it's clear to me that I shouldn't have done that, and I've wasted your time, and Suziq's, and Helmi's. Sorry to all 3 of you!

@suziq: I think the point's moot; Mary now wants up and down motion. ;-)

Mary, why don't you put the whole thing in "Übersetzung korrekt" and we'll look at it.

@dude - OK, you now offer yoyoing because I was about to say that veering is only in one direction and I think a change of direction mid-course and back again is needed. Yo-yo is only really used for up and down, isn't it?

I'm going to put us out of our misery and use 'slalom' course. You could set one up on the water for a regatta, couldn't you? Why not. Thanks for your help -- consider the thread closed.

@dude - and I missed a couple of comments - (up and down is OK!!!) ...whatever! :)

can use: fluctuating stock prices.