Technically it can, and the real question is where the translation will be used. In a file which asks for finality to be documented, a rendering of the text without that record is incomplete, because the sentence being looked for is not yet in the source. Finality is not a section drafted into the judgment from the start; it is a separate entry added later, signed by a judge and bearing a date of its own.
Where the finality record is written
HMK Article 302(4) defines the record through four elements: a statement that the judgment has become final, the date, the court’s seal and the signature of the president or the judge. It is equally clear about the place: the entry is written under the ilam or on its reverse. The Registry Services Regulation repeats the same rule in its own words. In practice the record therefore sits as a small block at the foot of the last page or on its back, and it is the part most often missed when a file is scanned. A record on the reverse is brought into the same translation with a note of its position.
A judge signs it, the registry certifies copies
The steps leading to finality are carried out by the registry, and the Regulation provides that copies are issued by the registry head with a statement that they conform to the original. The finality entry itself, however, is signed by the president or the judge. For judgments which became final after passing through the remedies, Article 302(5) places the entry, and the notifications needed afterwards, with the first-instance court. So in a file returning from an appellate stage the record is obtained from the court which gave the judgment, not from the court which reviewed it.
What an early rendering is good for
A translation made from the text without the record has real informational value: a colleague abroad reads the reasoning, the spelling of party names and the choice of terms are settled at the outset, and the notice of available remedies becomes visible. Placed in a file which requires proof of finality, the same translation falls short and has to be completed by a rendering of the record. Treating the two as two texts from the beginning also prevents a single file from ending up with two differing translations of one judgment.
The two dates do not merge
The date in the record is the date of finality; the judgment carries its own date, and the two need not fall on the same day. Where, for compelling reasons, only the operative part of a civil judgment was pronounced, the reasoned judgment has to be written within one month of pronouncement, and finality is a later moment again. The record may also state the route by which finality came about, whether without recourse to a remedy or through an appellate decision upholding the judgment. That phrase is not shortened, because it is exactly what the receiving authority reads.
Files which ask for proof of finality
MÖHUK Article 53(1)(b) counts the writing or document showing that a foreign judgment has become final, and its approved translation, among the attachments to an exequatur petition, which shows how such a file treats the point. The mirror situation arises for a Turkish judgment going abroad: an authority which asks for proof of finality is asking for the record and its rendering, not for a longer version of the judgment. A record obtained later can usually be added, but it then needs a translation of its own. Acte Tercüme translates the finality annotation together with the judgment, showing its position and its date.