diff --git a/Examples/test-suite/guile/li_std_string_runme.scm b/Examples/test-suite/guile/li_std_string_runme.scm
index 5dde68f8d..5b5563281 100644
--- a/Examples/test-suite/guile/li_std_string_runme.scm
+++ b/Examples/test-suite/guile/li_std_string_runme.scm
@@ -2,4 +2,8 @@
 ;; Guile modules (namespaces) but simply put all the bindings into the
 ;; current module.  That's enough for such a simple test.
 (dynamic-call "scm_init_li_std_string_module" (dynamic-link "./libli_std_string"))
+; Note: when working with non-ascii strings in guile 2
+;       locale must be set explicitly
+;       The setlocale call below takes care of that
+(setlocale LC_ALL "")
 (load "../schemerunme/li_std_string.scm")
diff --git a/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg b/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg
index 2f8f3ae98..322d660c5 100644
--- a/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg
+++ b/Lib/guile/guile_scm_run.swg
@@ -41,10 +41,14 @@ typedef struct swig_guile_clientdata {
   SCM goops_class;
 } swig_guile_clientdata;
 
+#if SCM_MAJOR_VERSION <= 2
+#define scm_to_utf8_string scm_to_locale_string
+#define scm_from_utf8_string scm_from_locale_string
+#endif
 #define SWIG_scm2str(s) \
   SWIG_Guile_scm2newstr(s, NULL)
 #define SWIG_str02scm(str) \
-  str ? scm_from_locale_string(str) : SCM_BOOL_F 
+  str ? scm_from_utf8_string(str) : SCM_BOOL_F 
 # define SWIG_malloc(size) \
   scm_malloc(size)
 # define SWIG_free(mem) \
@@ -84,21 +88,13 @@ SWIGINTERN char *
 SWIG_Guile_scm2newstr(SCM str, size_t *len) {
 #define FUNC_NAME "SWIG_Guile_scm2newstr"
   char *ret;
-  char *tmp;
-  size_t l;
 
   SCM_ASSERT (scm_is_string(str), str, 1, FUNC_NAME);
-  l = scm_c_string_length(str);
 
-  ret = (char *) SWIG_malloc( (l + 1) * sizeof(char));
+  ret = scm_to_utf8_string(str);
   if (!ret) return NULL;
 
-  tmp = scm_to_locale_string(str);
-  memcpy(ret, tmp, l);
-  free(tmp);
-
-  ret[l] = '\0';
-  if (len) *len = l;
+  if (len) *len = strlen(ret) - 1;
   return ret;
 #undef FUNC_NAME
 }
@@ -473,7 +469,7 @@ SWIG_Guile_GetArgs (SCM *dest, SCM rest,
   int num_args_passed = 0;
   for (i = 0; i<reqargs; i++) {
     if (!SCM_CONSP(rest))
-      scm_wrong_num_args(scm_from_locale_string(procname ? (char *) procname : "unknown procedure"));
+      scm_wrong_num_args(scm_from_utf8_string(procname ? (char *) procname : "unknown procedure"));
     *dest++ = SCM_CAR(rest);
     rest = SCM_CDR(rest);
     num_args_passed++;
@@ -486,7 +482,7 @@ SWIG_Guile_GetArgs (SCM *dest, SCM rest,
   for (; i<optargs; i++)
     *dest++ = SCM_UNDEFINED;
   if (!SCM_NULLP(rest))
-      scm_wrong_num_args(scm_from_locale_string(procname ? (char *) procname : "unknown procedure"));
+      scm_wrong_num_args(scm_from_utf8_string(procname ? (char *) procname : "unknown procedure"));
   return num_args_passed;
 }