When using applications that use qt3 (that is, most KDE applications I'd imagine), but most notably in kopete and konqueror for me (I use KDE 3.5.7, I had not noticed this problem prior to 3.5.7, but it may have still been there). It's outlined in the Novell bugzilla link -- I tested the patch there, and it fixes the problem nicely.
Created attachment 124500 [details, diff] Patch taken from the Novell Bugzilla
Created attachment 124502 [details] ebuild
app-i18n/scim-qtimm-0.9.4-r1 in cvs. thanks.