diff -up swig-2.0.4/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg.rh752054 swig-2.0.4/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg
--- swig-2.0.4/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg.rh752054	2011-11-14 14:44:35.688597584 +0100
+++ swig-2.0.4/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg	2011-11-14 14:45:15.879594778 +0100
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ static swig_module_info *SWIG_Guile_GetM
 SWIGINTERN char *
 SWIG_Guile_scm2newstr(SCM str, size_t *len) {
 #define FUNC_NAME "SWIG_Guile_scm2newstr"
-  char *ret;
+  char *ret, *tmp;
   size_t l;
 
   SCM_ASSERT (SCM_STRINGP(str), str, 1, FUNC_NAME);
@@ -73,7 +73,9 @@ SWIG_Guile_scm2newstr(SCM str, size_t *l
   ret = (char *) SWIG_malloc( (l + 1) * sizeof(char));
   if (!ret) return NULL;
 
-  memcpy(ret, SCM_STRING_CHARS(str), l);
+  tmp = scm_to_utf8_string(str);
+  memcpy(ret, tmp, l);
+  free(tmp);
   ret[l] = '\0';
   if (len) *len = l;
   return ret;