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Because katsu means cutlet, a thin slice of meat. Tonkatsu for example is pork cutlet.

Transliteration is not translation.

From Wikipedia, that's technically and etymologicaly correct :

"The cutlet was introduced to Japan during the Meiji period, in a Western cuisine restaurant in the fashionable Ginza district of Tokyo. The Japanese pronunciation of cutlet is katsuretsu.

In Japanese cuisine, katsuretsu or shorter katsu is actually the name for a Japanese version of the Wiener schnitzel, a breaded cutlet. Dishes with katsu include tonkatsu and katsudon."

TIL, but in my defense, an abbreviation of a transliteration, which has come to mean something slightly different should probably be considered a new word and not be transliterated back into its etymological ancestor.

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