i'm not sure what you mean by "to turn a once dynamic variable into a read-only" ... that doesn't really seem to relate to the refactoring at hand, nor does it relate to declaring a variable "final" in java ... Readonly seems to be the perfect corollary for perl.
UPDATE: based on a message i just got, apparently i wasn't clear about my "i'm not sure what you mean" comment ... I do understand the concept of "locking" a variable that could previously be changed so that once it is locked it is effectively readonly -- but i assumed i must have been misunderstanding the OP question, since that has nothing to do with the refactoring.
This refactoring only works if a variable is assigned once, the comment by Fowler about declaring the variable "final" before attempting the refactoring is all about ensuring that it really is a "read only" from the very start.